


Meanwhile in the Rift

by Horriftfic



Series: Meanwhile in the Rift [1]
Category: No Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Humor, Everyone Is Gay, Everyone is alive again, Everyone is magical, F/F, F/M, Gratuitous allusions, M/M, Resurrection, Shonen anime superpowers, Weirdness, rad herrings galore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-09 09:47:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 55,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5535311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Horriftfic/pseuds/Horriftfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world much like ours, the fate of humanity rests on the shoulders of two 14-year old mages and the people they inadvertently raised from the dead. </p><p>Things get weird.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Meanwhile in the Rift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two teenage magicians set out to fix their major screwup.

The full moon cast a peaceful silver light on two teenage magicians frantically trying to break out of their summer camp. Jen pushed Jo over the fence and then followed suit. The pair sat in the dirt, exhausted and wondering what to do next. Jen felt for the cheap green brooch holding her hood in place and sighed in relief when it was still there.

“Do you think anyone heard that?” Jo asked. They brushed off their long hair and tucked it back into their hood. 

“Whatever. Our luggage is ok.” Jen said, leaping to her feet. She gestured to a pile of sandy briefcases and pulled them upright. “Sounds ok, at least. Oh, your brooch is a little..” She reached over to Jo and pushed the clasp back into place. This brooch was also rather beat up, but its glossy blue stone seemed to carry some kind of peace.

The kids needed some peace tonight. They drew their robes around them and shuddered. Underneath their black mage robes, they were still wearing summer camp t-shirts. Tall pine trees waved their branches like hands in the darkness. Jo fished a piece of chalk out of their pocket and started drawing two large circles on the pavement.

The plan was simple. Pack up, make it outside, summon the demon replacements, and get the hell out of there. So far everything was going alright. Jen and Jo had avoided using magic all week to ensure they would have enough blood for the ritual, and successfully slipped under the radar of the camp RAs. Jen kept her ears pricked for footsteps.

Jo finished drawing the summoning circles and put their phone away.

“There!”  
“I thought you couldn’t search up this ritual,” Jen said.  
“I didn’t. I took a picture of my grimoire. It was kind of blurry, but hopefully that won’t affect the runes too much.”  
Jen pulled out a pocket knife and rolled up her sleeve.  
“What are you doing?”  
“What do you think I’m doing? I’m starting the ritual.”  
“I brought blood already!” Jo waved a water bottle in Jen’s face. “Take it.”  
Jen reluctantly put her knife away. “Come on, you know what everyone says, if I don’t use my own blood often enough-”  
“-you won’t get more loss tolerance. I know, but we really can’t afford to fuck up right now. And if you get sick later you’ll have to come back.”  
“Yeah, I guess.”  
“I brought enough for both of us.” Jo said, patting their belt. They knew it was less embarrassing to use help when everyone was using it. Jen smiled and took the bottle.

“Three, two, one.”  
In unison, both kids poured their blood onto the ground.

Everything about this ritual was small. The circles were small, the lines didn’t glow much, and there was a minimal amount of sparks. It was a far cry from the loud, explosive rift that Jen and Jo had created two years earlier, in an advanced ritual known as the Call. Neither of them expected it to actually work, given their inexperience and general mediocrity, but it worked (twice!) and the kids found themselves saddled with two confused Rifteds. The professors and diplomats were cloudy on the details of how these people came back to life, but every mage and their mother knew exactly what happened, leading to 5-year moratoriums on necromancy in most major cities. 

Jen and Jo managed to avoid the attention, which didn’t sit right with Jen, who messaged Jo, who somehow found a way to email Dr. Rosalind Franklin, who befriended both magicians and got them to help her on a project of sorts against an entity called PIRCH. This was extremely confusing at first because neither kid could figure out why Rosalind wanted to destroy a furniture store, but after reading some notes and seeing a few pictures, they were totally down to take PIRCH down. The kids held onto their secret with all their might, waiting to embark on this adventure.

There was a loud crackle when the imps emerged from the summoning circles. They staggered around on their hooves for a few moments before noticing the mages. Both kids looked very imposing, with their faces hidden in shadowy hoods. 

“Denizens of hell, obey our command!” Jo cried. “We pay your toll to this world and you...you pay...you pay us back! You owe us!”  
“We have a job for you!” Jen added.  
“Yes...masters?” one imp said. Demons of their stature were rarely summoned by humans and they were unsure about proper etiquette.  
“We want you to imitate us. Shapeshift into humans that look just like us, and live in our place until we call you again.”

The imps’ beady eyes widened. “Live as humans?”

“Yeah. You know how humans work, right?”  
“I know! I know! You eat three times a day, and go to things like sleep, or church. I don’t like church, though.”  
“Ehh, don’t worry about that,” Jo said. “I don’t like it either. Oh, you’ll get to go on vacation later this summer!”  
“I’m not going anywhere but I have a ton of snacks at home. You can have those.” Jen said.

The imps huddled and chattered quietly for almost a full minute. Jen nervously looked over her shoulder. 

“Come on, we don’t have all day!” she hissed.  
The imps promptly turned around. “Show us your faces.”  
“Yes, show us, we can’t mimic you otherwise...”  
The hooded figures cautiously took down their hoods. The imps smiled devilishly and expanded, morphing into precise copies, down to the dirt on their cloaks.  
“OK! Go, go back to bed! Our cabin is behind the fence, next to that big rock. Be quiet!” Jo dashed towards their luggage and started running off into the trees.  
“Don’t we need names?”  
“Long hair is Jo, short hair is Jen! Bye!” 

The hooded figures vanished into the night. The new Jen and Jo sat in the cool air for a while before walking back to bed.  
________

Meanwhile in another part of the rifts, Rosalind was impatiently bouncing her leg at a coffee shop. What time was it in America? She thought. It would be hard for the children to travel so far in darkness. Her phone buzzed.

“Hello?”  
“Hey, Ros. We’ve got a ride now.” Jo said.  
“...there’s a bus running in the dead of night?”  
“Oh, no, we called an Uber. We’ll get to the docks in an hour and then...”  
“Then?”  
“I’ll figure something out.”  
Rosalind sighed. “Alright, but stay safe. We can’t afford to lose you.”  
Jo hung up. Rosalind looked at the busy street outside the window. So many people passing by, without the slightest clue where each person was trying to go. Her stomach was twisted with anxiety and nobody knew it but herself.

Rosalind decided it was good to be alone this way. She had work to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Meanwhile in the Rift will undergo some major rewrites up until chapter 6 or so. Since it began as a joke between me and charlesczerny, the fic has expanded greatly and we've worked out most of the major plot holes. As a result, a lot of these early chapters no longer make sense for the story/character arcs we have in mind. Nothing before chapter 9 is hard and fast canon until the rewrite is done.
> 
> That being said, this prologue is totally new content, and I hope it's a more satisfying beginning!


	2. Furniture Shopping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Josephine Bonaparte knows too much.

Both receptions in the bar were terrible. Napoleon’s phone was burning in his hand as it struggled to find a signal. He set it down on the counter and sighed. There was no music playing like it always seemed to play in modern restaurants, but the noise was still enough to drive him mad. Why was here again?

A tall man turned towards him and smiled faintly. A engagement ring sparkled on his hand as he took a drink of water. Oh great. Napoleon hadn’t felt like socializing since he heard Dr. Franz Kafka introduce himself earlier that evening and he wasn’t getting the message. Wasn’t he supposed to be shy?

“Long night, isn’t it?” he said. “I just hope Arthur doesn’t burn himself out too badly.”

Arthur Wellesley was roaring with laughter in the back of the bar. He waved an empty beer bottle around as tried to tell a joke to a bewildered minor noble.

“Okay, okay...you...remember this one? No? Ok, so here it goes, two fellows walk into the cellar...”  
“He’s absolutely wasted.” Napoleon said. “You’re not going to stop him?” He didn’t particularly feel like wrangling his drunk frenemy this late at night without Josephine in the room.

Franz shook his head. “I’m not strong enough to stop him, and besides, what if I injure him? We’re getting married tomorrow.”

You worry too much, Napoleon thought. But really, who knows at this point? Arthur shouldn’t be here in this bar, but if he’s going to be here anyways he’s an adult who should be able to take care of himself. 

“Aren’t you nervous? At all? It’s a big day tomorrow.”  
Franz pursed his lips. “I don’t know. There’s a little bit of hope in me yet. I won’t be nearly as lonely anymore.”  
“I’ve been married, so listen to me. You’ve probably heard this a million times, but don’t expect it to be always fun. If there’s an argument, or you can’t see eye to eye, don’t get caught up in the moment. Though you don’t seem like that kind of man in a fight. You should be alright.”  
“How so? I’ve always seen marriage as something completely beyond me, something I can’t endure-”

“Ehhh,” Napoleon said while waving his hand in Franz’s face. “What do you know? Your marriage won’t determine the fate of a nation.”  
“Sorry.”

Napoleon frowned and studied Franz’s expression. Perfectly impenetrable.

“HEY ASSHOLE!” shouted Arthur. Franz quickly pushed in his chair and fled to the men’s room. Napoleon realized how much his head hurt.

“What do you want, you imbecile? You want a piece of this?” Napoleon said. He dodged a flying bottle and rolled his eyes. Napoleon Bonaparte was full of salt and ready to fight tonight.

While the Napoleonic wars raged outside, Franz leaned uncomfortably against the stall door and sighed. Hopefully the noise wouldn’t drive him insane in here. The lights were flickering.

It felt like eternity before someone knocked on the door. Franz opened the door and peered out.

“What is it?”

The exasperated bartender wiped his forehead and took a deep breath. “Your eh...husband? Yeah, he just broke something important in the back. That Italian dude said you’re the only one who can calm him down. Go work your magic or we’ll have to kick you out.”

“I...I understand. I’m so sorry, I don’t know what’s gotten into everyone tonight, there is a lot of stuff going on this week but I’ve been doing my be-” 

“Aw come on, it’s no big deal. You’re gonna have the best day of your life tomorrow! It’s getting pretty late anyways, you should be getting out of here.” The bartender gave him a thumbs-up. Franz still didn’t understand how that was supposed to be encouraging, but he smiled and went out.

After several pleas, extensive hugging, and drunken mumbling about something from Ireland, the wedding party was thrown out of the bar. Franz lifted his husband and slowly carried him towards the taxi. He turned to find Napoleon limping his way down the sidewalk.

“Don’t worry about me. My hotel is pretty close by,” he said. Napoleon looked up at the sparkling skyscrapers above and sighed. What a ridiculous night, he thought. He couldn’t even be angry anymore. Something in Franz’s eyes told him that he too, understood how ridiculous all of this was. All they could do was retreat to their hotel rooms and wait for tomorrow.  
____________________

A few days later Napoleon’s phone buzzed at 3 AM. Arthur had sent him several photos, mostly pictures of Franz or people walking around the deck of a cruise ship. There was one photo of Arthur with no shirt on, sitting in a pool. The background was dominated by two shadowy figures holding ice cream. Napoleon was equal amounts disgusted and perplexed.

"Unbelievable. He has no standards anymore." Napoleon muttered as he turned off his phone and went back to sleep. How did those two even meet, anyways? What did Arthur want from Napoleon now? He knew this weird long distance friendship (if you could call it that) couldn’t last forever. But for the time being all he could do was try to sleep on it.

“Good morning.” Josephine whispered. She gently shook Napoleon and rolled him over.   
“Hello.”  
“Did the phone wake you up? I thought it was on silent-oh, would you look at that!” She flicked through the photos Arthur sent.  
“What are you smiling about? It’s just some idiot trying to start another argument. Don’t you hate it when I’m on the phone with him?”  
“I’m just glad they...that he’s having fun.”  
Napoleon sighed and got out of bed. 

The Bonapartes lived in a small, one-floor house on the southern edge of San Francisco. The front had a few bushes, the back a rose garden, both meticulously attended to by Josephine. The French government was confused to hear that Josephine did not want to stay in Europe after she was rifted over, but gave her the money to move anyways. Josephine told them that she loved the city, wanted to see more of modern life, couldn’t stand being in Paris with all the reminders of who she used to be. So here she was on a cloudy morning, calculating her next move.

“Back in our day we didn’t need any stupid machines.” Napoleon said as he struggled with the a coffee maker.   
“Try taking the pot off first.”  
Napoleon obliged and shook a few drops out of the empty pot. When he tried to rinse it out the faucet popped off and a jet of water shot up into some curtains. Napoleon quickly stuck the pot over the hole and ran back to his seat.

"Where do we buy a new sink?" he asked as casually as possible.

"Hmm...there's Home Depot. But that's where I got THIS faucet. Oh, I know. There's a new furniture place called PIRCH. It's a bit far away, but it's a weekend anyways. We have all the time in the world."

“Of course we do.”  
________

The Bonapartes strolled down the aisles of PIRCH. The showroom was flooded with white fluorescent light that buzzed against quiet elevator music. It was hard to see very far into the room because everything was positioned like a garish mobile of solid colors and thin bars of bamboo. There was nobody else in the store.

Most of the walls were covered in text, and Josephine was following it intently. There seemed to be some sort of storyline, but neither person could make sense of it. Napoleon read the descriptions at an increasingly worried rate.

"Who...writes this nonsense?"  
"I assure you that it is NOT nonsense," a deep voice said behind them. Josephine spun around and nearly hit the dark-suited man. He was extremely tall, with thick black hair and high cheekbones. His cufflinks were small green leaves bordered in gold. 

“Yes...Manager?” she whispered.   
Manager raised an eyebrow behind his sunglasses. How did she know his title?  
“Is there anything I can help you with, madam?”  
“Oh, nothing, I'm just...looking around, heh heh!”  
“Very well.” He turned on his heels and walked off. 

“What's his problem?” Napoleon said. “How rude. It's like he doesn't want us to buy anything.”  
Josephine shrugged. “It's alright.”

The couple continued weaving in and out of furniture displays, all accompanied by incomprehensible passages on the walls. Josephine carried herself with an unusual amount of tension and it was making Napoleon nervous as well. She stopped in front of a shelf and took a few photos before crouching to examine the underside. 

“Are you finding everything ok?” Someone chirped. Napoleon turned around to see a smiling woman with smooth dark skin and a bright yellow dress. Her face beautiful yet strangely forgettable. She wore a green leaf-shaped pin and a badge that read “Aesthetician”. Napoleon wasn’t entirely sure what it meant but he knew it wasn’t a name.

“Um...yes.”

“Glad to hear that! Oh, miss, please don't touch the merchandise.” 

“S-sorry.” Josephine’s hands were shaking. How absolutely unlike her to be frightened by a stranger, Napoleon thought. Josephine brushed herself off and darted away to a corner. She carefully plucked a glossy rectangular device out of a crevice. Thank god they didn’t find this one. 

“This is a very interesting store,” Napoleon thought out loud on the other side of the showroom.   
“It is indeed! We are completely dedicated to the philosophy of joy!” Aesthetician said.   
“Uh huh. Could you show me where the sinks are?”  
“Of course. This way, sir.”

They stopped before a row of impossibly clean counters and brushed metal. Napoleon, unsure where to start, started turning each faucet on and off.

“Do you need any assistance, sir? This particular model is wonderfully designed, all according to our philosophy of-”  
“No. No thank you.”  
“Alright!” 

Napoleon breathed a sigh of relief when the Aesthetician finally left him alone. He reached for the nearest faucet and twisted its handle. No water came out, just a puff of dust. Napoleon frowned and gave it a few hits before trying again, with the same result. 

“What’s the matter now...” Napoleon muttered. He caught a glimpse of sigils etched into the wall behind the sink. Something was definitely wrong with this store, and it wasn’t just the weird hipster aesthetic. Napoleon bit down hard on his thumb and swiped the blood across the sigil.

Josephine could feel the tremors several shelves away but couldn’t run to the source in time. The wall started to sink into the floor, shaking violently. A bewildered Napoleon quickly took cover under a table.

“What did you do?!” Josephine hissed.   
“Nothing! Let’s get out!” Napoleon started to crawl out and run when Josephine grabbed his shirt and pulled both of them under the table. 

The wall was now completely gone, revealing a wide concrete hallway. A few white-coated scientists stopped dead in their tracks when they noticed the gap and darted across with clipboards over their faces. Four guards in riot gear walking around a prisoner slowed down their march and stood dumbfounded in front of the missing wall.

“Jesus Christ!” Josephine whispered. No amount of blurry footage or descriptions could have prepared her to see the Refugee in person. He was tall and worryingly thin, with a washed-out face and limp black hair. His dark eyes were glazed over in a distant gaze. Josephine noticed a shallow ring of scars around Refugee’s neck and shuddered.

“That...isn’t that Franz?” Napoleon asked, squinting in disbelief.  
“Shh! I’ll explain later. If we get out.”

Manager sighed and took off his sunglasses as if he was talking to a disobedient nephew. 

“Refugee.”  
“...Sir?” Refugee tried to stretch over his captors and get a look outside. Manager shot him a freezing stare before redirecting his anger at the guards.  
“What the hell are you guys doing? We’ve got customers in the store right now! In fact, one of them was right-” Manager whipped around. “Oh, son of a bitch, did he run? Aesthetician!”  
“I didn’t see him! He was just looking at the sinks over there, and then, then...”  
“Never mind, we’ll deal with them later. Close this up. Tell Unit A to send all of today’s CCTV footage to me by 5.”

“Yes sir,” the guards said in unison while marching off. As they turned Refugee around, Josephine noticed a shiny white machine attached to his nape. It was shaped like a stretched hexagon and had a single blinking, unlabeled green light. Josephine only got a glimpse before Refugee vanished behind the guards. She couldn’t stay confused for too long, though. Manager was now carefully going through the entire store, looking in cabinets and under tables. He breezed through the maze of furniture like a ghost. Aesthetician’s heels clicked across the tile as she went up to a fridge, punched a few buttons, and watched the wall close up again.

Josephine narrowed her eyes. The door was close, but it would be hard to get there without arousing suspicion. She could feel the tension in her limbs, ready to spring away at a moment’s notice. Footsteps drawing closer. They were not slowing down, which gave Josephine a little breathing room. Perhaps Manager really didn’t know where she was...

Napoleon abruptly stood up and dusted himself off, face to face with Manager.

“Wow! What is that?” he asked very loudly. Josephine gestured at him in horror from under the table.  
“Glad you asked,” Manager chuckled. “I uh, well, our warehouse is connected directly to the showroom, and we usually don’t open the gates unless we’re moving. You know how it is, glitches and whatnot. But it’s very efficient! We’ve got unbeatable prices.”  
“Prices.”  
“Yes. Prices.”  
“Well,” Napoleon said, dragging out the word. “I should be going now. I was just worried, it looked very dangerous.”  
“There’s nothing to worry about. Oh, did you hurt your hand?”

Napoleon glanced at the teeth marks on his thumb and looked back up. The Manager was eerily calm right now, even relaxed. He was watching Napoleon as if expecting a specific answer.

“I ask because we really can’t have blood lying around the store.”  
“I’m fine, thank you VERY much. Hey, who do you think you’re talking to anyways? I’m a grown man. I can take care of this, and honestly, I don’t want to come back here for my sink.”  
“Terribly sorry for any offense I’ve caused. I am simply dedicated to customer satisfaction.”  
(As if your staff are the picture of hospitality,) Napoleon muttered in French.  
“Excuse me?”  
“I said, your staff are not helpful!” Napoleon snapped. Manager smiled coolly but couldn’t hide the twitch on his lip.  
“Well, I do my best as a manager. Say, where is your wife?”  
“Right here.” Josephine said behind him. She smashed a chair into his head, sending him sprawling on the floor. Josephine quickly grabbed Napoleon’s hand and ran like the wind.

“You-you goddamn...GUARDS!” Manager shouted hoarsely. He watched helplessly as Josephine’s car screeched out of the parking lot. By the time the wall opened again and reinforcements were in the store, the Bonapartes were gone.

“Manager!” Aesthetician cried, trying to pull him upright. He staggered to his feet and reluctantly accepted her hug.  
“Essie, Essie, I’m alright. I’ve taken a lot worse, I couldn’t be the Manager if I couldn’t- oh, come on. Don’t give me the waterworks. You’re not in trouble.”  
“I’m not?” she said in totally honest surprise.

“No. You handled this situation in a very excellent manner, just as I expect from an Aesthetician.” It had been a rough couple of months at PIRCH, marked by logistical issues and government checkups and an intruder who managed to elude security over and over again. Everyone was on edge, and as usual Aesthetician took all of it onto her shoulders. She needed all the encouragement she could get.

Aesthetician smiled and hugged Manager again. Manager smiled too, certain that he had the mysterious intruder in his sights.  
_____

(Why did you do that?!) the Bonapartes shouted at each other, in unison, as they sped towards Union Square. 

“My conversation would have worked.” Napoleon said.   
“What were you trying to do? Play dumb?”   
“Yes! It’s a great strategy! Trick the manager into thinking we just hid the moment there was big noise, like common stupid customers!”  
“Would have worked better if you didn’t insult him to his face.”   
“Josephine!”  
“I’m just saying the truth.”  
“You didn’t have to _kill_ anyone. It’s not a big deal, seeing some weird soldiers in a hallway. Sure, they’re not my soldiers, but there’s no reason why Manager would tell them to attack us.”  
Josephine slammed the brakes a bit too hard at a red light.  
“You have no idea what PIRCH is, do you?” she said.  
“Of course I do. It’s a furniture store. You recommended it yourself!”

Josephine silently cursed herself. She was an idiot, a complete idiot for relaxing and getting sloppy. She never should have brought Napoleon. She never should have suggested PIRCH in the first place. Home Depot would have sufficed and yet she blew her cover for a stupid little pickup mission. 

“What’s gotten into you, anyways? I haven’t seen you this nervous about everything since...you know. Since I was emperor. Is it just too hard out here, in America? We can go back to France. No more English problems.”

Josephine decided there was no point hiding it anymore. 

“You know my friends in London? I’ve been working as their agent. To destroy PIRCH.”  
Napoleon did a double take. “Destroy?”

“Mmhmm. I gather intelligence for them and they tell me what to do next. You won’t believe the things we’ve found. The furniture, and the soldiers, it’s...it’s just the beginning.”

Napoleon sensed a twinge of sadness in Josephine’s voice and grew serious. “Tell me more.”

“That man we saw? The one you said looked like Franz? He really is Franz. We have no idea how they got another one, because there’s no ritual for that, and yet...they did it. They’ve been holding him prisoner for who knows how long. I don’t know for what. Rosalind, my friend, she says they beat him and do all kinds of horrible things. It’s all just...so much.”  
“Why not call the police?”  
“The PIRCH corporation has its fingers in the government. Ada broke into their electronic mail and read everything. No use. It’s just me and the ladies, the three of us.”

Napoleon furrowed his brow and stared out the window for a few moments. Everything was becoming extremely bizarre. There were tears on Josephine’s face as she pulled up to the curb and got out.

“Hey, where are you going now?”  
“I need some coffee. Do you want one?”  
“Yes, thank you.”

Josephine slammed the door shut and walked off. Napoleon wondered what to do with this information now that he was alone. It became pretty clear that _someone_ needed to know this more than he did.   
_____


	3. Both of You, Dance Like You Want to Win!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The hooded figures finally start doing some work.

_______

Meanwhile in a different part of the rifts, a cruise ship was cutting through the waves on its way to Hawaii. It was morning, too late for Franz and Arthur to stand being in bed but too early for breakfast. Franz was working on his diary when someone knocked on the cabin door. 

“Hello?” he asked cautiously.  
“The maid’s not supposed to come in until ten.” Arthur said without looking up from his phone.  
“Hmm. Must be something special...”

The visitor knocked again. When Franz opened the door, he was greeted by Jen and Jo, wearing oversized white suits and captain’s hats drawn low over their faces. 

“This is uh, complimentary room service,” Jen said as deeply as possible. “Take it.” She shoved two plastic bags of clothes into Franz’s chest.  
“Who are you?”  
“I’m...the first mate. This is the second mate.” Jo said, pointing at Jen. Jen nodded so hard she almost lost her hat.  
“Aren’t you a little short to be sailors?”  
“Holy _shit._ ” Jen said.  
“Whaat?” Franz exclaimed. “What did I do? Are you even allowed to swear around passengers?”  
“Now’s not the time for nerd jokes, buddy,” Jo replied. “Right now, all you have to do is take the room service, and as a uh, complimentary service, you put it on and show up at the workout room after lunch. I don’t care how long lunch is, have a party, I don’t know.”  
“We will teach you exercises,” Jen added for absolutely no reason at all.

Franz raised an eyebrow but tightened his grip on the clothes. He thanked the kids and softly closed the door.  
______

The hooded figures did not have a hard time blending in on the cruise, despite their obviously magical attire. Most passengers assumed they just happened to be going through a witch phase at the same time mom and dad planned a family vacation. Never mind that mom and dad always seemed to be on the other end of the ship. 

Jen and Jo were given two days to familiarize themselves with the floor plans and goof off. At the moment they were both eating ice cream and sitting with their feet in the pool. As far as the kids were concerned, the entire point of a cruise was infinite food.

“I’m bored,” Jen said. “Are we there yet?”  
“No,” Jo said.  
“Man, this is stupid. It’s going to be two whole weeks before we get to Hawaii. I heard that the army has these super secret ships that can go from America to China in like, one week. Why not take that?”  
“It doesn’t have a buffet,” Jo said.  
“That’s true.” Jen finished her ice cream and smashed the empty cone into her forehead. “Aaah. I feel better now. Let’s get down to business.”

The hooded figures went belowdecks and weaved through the halls to find the gym. The lights inside were dimmed but they could still make out the faint outline of two unusual machines among the treadmills. 

“I told you, nobody would move them!” Jen whispered, opening the door. 

After fiddling with some wires and punching the sides a few times, both synchronization testers were started up successfully. Despite all of the advanced jargon on the screens and Ada’s best paint job, the testers were obviously just hacked Dance Dance Revolution machines. The floor pads blinked on and off like traffic lights.

Jen and Jo’s only real job was to get some Rifteds to use the testers, but even that wasn’t guaranteed to happen. The kids didn’t know how to befriend a pair of middle-aged men without annoying them all day, and who knew if they could be trusted to keep appointments. At this point, however, there was nothing to do but wait. Jo started a treadmill and played with the speed while Jen blogged on the floor. A few people walked past the gym and even looked inside without doing anything. The room was still with impatience. 

Suddenly, the gym door opened and Franz cautiously leaned in. 

“H...hello??”

Franz was wearing the exercise clothes he was given and looked rather embarrassed to be standing around in a crop top and yoga pants. Jo yelled in shock and in that brief moment of surprise the treadmill shot them into the wall with a loud crash.  
“Suh dude,” Jen said.  
“Alright, what is this for?” Arthur grumbled, stepping in wearing the same outfit. Jen and Jo had to stifle their laughter under their hoods.  
“Get down on the dance pads. Hands and feet on the lights,” Jo said, smacking the ground for emphasis. 

The men awkwardly got into position like runners on a track. Jo staggered to their feet and ran around behind the testers, starting fans and pressing buttons. 

“What are you doing?” Arthur asked.  
“Just follow our lead. If you want to stay on top of everything you’ve got to work for it!” Jo pressed something on her phone and the tester screens lit up. “Dance for your lives!”  
“What? What’s going on?” Arthur said, hearing fans rev up underneath him. “Hey, who are you people anyways?”

Jen and Jo just smiled, faces obscured in shadow. The tester’s speakers crackled to life and began playing music. 

“The Cambridge Synchronization test is a multistage cooperative task that gets more difficult as it progresses. The purpose of this test is to assess the physical and mental properties of Rifteds. The test will be repeated until both subjects successfully complete the pattern, or either subject makes more than five mistakes. Follow the instructions displayed on the screen. Get set...ready...go!”

________  
Half an hour later, Arthur struggled to reach the glowing spot with his left toe behind him, his right arm already stretched as far as it can go to an identical spot just barely arm's length past his nose. He imagined that Franz must not be having such a hard time, given his long and flexible limbs. What he did not account for, however, was the other man's complete and utter lack of rhythm.  
Franz' limbs seemed to be tangled beneath him, one bony hand under his ear, the other somehow next to his foot. A loud beep announced that they failed the test again. Arthur slumped to the ground, partly grateful to not have to stretch anymore. The last time he had to bend this far--  
"Mmph." Franz made a sound of defeat. He remained in his jumbled position for a little too long. Arthur began to worry.  
Arthur pushed himself up and crossed his legs. "In any case," he said, massaging his own neck. "I still don't understand the use of these exercises. Who are you?" He glanced up at the two hooded figures in front of them. Their expressions were unreadable.  
"If you are to save yourselves, you must learn to work together." They said in unison.  
"Well, that makes plenty bloody sense." Arthur wanted to say these words out loud, but that would be impolite and ill-advised, especially considering that these...people...could potentially hex him at any moment. He still didn’t see why these ridiculous tights were necessary for the dancing. Arthur couldn’t help but feel a bit offended. From the corner of his eye, he finally saw Franz unfold and sit up.  
“Incredible, incredible!” Franz kept whispering to himself.  
“What’s the matter?”  
“Do you know who these children are?”  
“No.” Arthur did not really care. All knew was that they were hell bent on ruining his honeymoon and they made him wear tiny shirts with music notes on them. Music notes! Franz put a hand on Arthur’s shoulder and snapped him out of his indignation.  
"They-" Franz pointed to the figures. "-are the ones who summoned us!"  
“What?”  
“It’s a feeling I have, some faint memory before I woke up clearly to this world. I’m glad to see them again.”  
“That’s not anything...weren’t you unconscious when you first came out?”  
“It is a feeling. Like that between infant and mother.”  
Arthur shrugged and got up. The idea of jumping to such grand conclusions on nothing but a sensation was completely alien to him. A lot of things about Franz were alien to him, but put together they managed to work, at least most of the time. Now there was a nagging voice in the back of Arthur’s mind, telling him to just double check the mages’ faces, to see if there was a shred of truth to what Franz said.  
Arthur stole a glance. The hooded figures were crouched over a phone, whispering about mail and doctors. Somehow the screen lit up their hoods while leaving their faces obscured. Their brooches gleamed like eyes, observing Arthur as he observed them.  
“Awesome! OK, guys, we’ll see you again tomorrow. Same time, same place.” Jen looked up and waved cheerfully at Arthur.  
He felt nervous. Slowly and quietly, he motioned for Franz to follow him out of the gym.  
Later in the locker room, Arthur was trying to process Franz's words and the endless stream of music and lights. Who was testing them? How did they know two Rifteds would be here for the test? Arthur looked over at Franz, who was leaning against the cold lockers with a bottle of water. Rifteds were hard to come by. It was a lonely thing, hearing everyone talk of the past as if it was mere fantasy. Arthur imagined it was the same for Franz, being paraded around like a freakshow. But every Rifted had to make the choice between that, or toiling away in obscurity. At least one Rifted would stay by Arthur’s side from now on.  
Franz started shaking and fell into an ugly fit of coughing.  
"Are you OK?"  
Franz nodded weakly and coughed again before holding onto Arthur's arm.  
“I’ll just...tell Dr. Gray about this later. She said I needed the rest on this ship but maybe it won’t play out...”  
“Don’t strain yourself.”  
“Do you know when the test will be over? The children said we have to come back tomorrow.”  
“I assume it will end when we complete the entire dance. Dance? It’s more of a rhythm problem than a dance.”  
Franz furrowed his brows. “You know I have no talent for music.”  
“We all do. But remember, you’re not doing this alone, and I will use the full extent of my capabilities to help us pass.” Arthur hugged Franz. “We’ve done far greater things. It’ll be alright.”  
Franz smiled, and Arthur realized he just lied. He didn’t know why or how he knew this. It was just a feeling.  
___________  
What happened that evening over dinner would remain a mystery. Arthur always came back here when he tried to recall how everything started, this moment, not the machines, not the wedding, just this horrible encounter. This was when he was unwittingly locked into the fight.  
Franz had left his meal mostly untouched again, as usual, and Arthur was trying to get him to eat. He needed the strength, he didn’t want to eat anymore, something must have happened next that set Arthur off. He always assumed it was the disparity between someone who went to war on meager provisions and someone who barely left the city. Old habits die hard.  
Whatever it was, Arthur snapped as quietly as someone could snap in a public restaurant. A glass of water tipped over and bounced on the carpet.  
The two men sat there in a tense silence, Arthur burning with frustration and Franz staring at him, mouth slightly open. Arthur looked up and saw that expression. Something had changed behind his eyes and now Franz was sitting tensely, as if he had been singled out in class to solve an impossible equation.  
"I’m sorry.”  
"...it's the wine talking. Sorry." Nobody had seemed to notice his little outburst. Franz was about to say something when Arthur’s phone started buzzing. He welcomed this escape.  
"Arthur, could we talk in private?"  
“Napoleon!”  
“I swear to God, this is serious. Nobody can hear you talking about this, OK?”  
There was a genuine twinge of nervous fear in Napoleon’s voice. How odd, Arthur thought. He excused himself and slipped out the restaurant onto the deck. The sun was halfway gone and a cool wind was picking up. What could Napoleon want now?  
"If it’s about the wedding, it’s too late for apologies. And don’t take this as an insult to Josephine, she was an excellent guest and about as cordial as she could have been. Besides, aren’t you the one always going on and on about how we Rifteds have to stick together? If fate is cruel enough to abandon us both here, why can't you do me the small favor of leaving me alone?"  
"Just listen to me for a moment, alright? Josephine and I were in San Francisco and we went to a furniture store..."  
The duke fell silent and listened. It grew colder and colder on deck as night approached, and eventually it was nothing but Napoleon's static-riddled voice and the restless waves. It was only 15 minutes but it felt like eternity listening to him.  
"Thank you, Monsieur Bonaparte."  
"Not a problem. Oh, you should see Josephine now. I’ll be watching her back from now on. Keep an eye on Franz."  
Napoleon hung up. Arthur slowly shuffled back to the restaurant. It was dark now and the deck was sparsely lit with bulbs hanging like frozen fireflies. Arthur could see just enough to note that Franz’s table was empty save for a bill. Not much to do now besides walk back.  
Napoleon was absolutely rude just then. Talking to a nobleman like that and then hanging up without saying goodbye. Then again, Napoleon shouldn’t have bothered him during dinner to begin with.  
Oh, who was he kidding? Arthur just needed to think about anything but that conversation. He opened the door to his cabin and found Franz relaxing with a magazine on the bed.  
"Who was it?"  
"Napoleon again..."  
Franz chuckled a little. "He's desperate, isn't he? Maybe we shouldn't have invited him to the wedding."  
"Fate invited him." Arthur grumbled. Franz wanted to say something but fell silent when Arthur looked at him in a strange, new way.  
What did it mean? Franz could not decipher it. He had never seen Arthur with this look in his eyes. Franz knew the pragmatic, calculating glint in Arthur’s eyes as he scanned the battlefield. Franz knew the cold anger that threatened to tear him apart from time to time and faded without warning. Franz knew the honest, sincere gaze Arthur gave him, filled with love, so much love and understanding and hope, asthey said their vows.  
This expression was not like the others.  
Arthur looked…vulnerable. Franz certainly felt it too, with a sinking feeling in his chest. Vulnerable and scared. Arthur’s hand curled against the phone into a fist, eyes cast downward and lips drawn into a thin line.  
Franz wished to reach out and touch his hand, reassure him. Tell him everything will be fine. Tell him, I will fix everything. What happened then will not happen again. Never again. Franz wished that he could make Arthur understand. Franz willed his hands, move! Please!  
His hand drifted through the distance between them slowly, with an almost-dreamlike quality. Transfixed, his eyes followed the movement of his hand to Arthur’s–long, bony fingers against rough, scarred palms and knuckles. The instant that he could look up into Arthur’s eyes, the expression was gone.  
Or perhaps, safely tucked away.  
Arthur smiled then, a small, reassuring smile, and lightly squeezed Franz’s fingers. Arthur didn’t know why he did. They held hands like this for a brief moment in time, but God knows he wished that it could have been forever. Why couldn’t the time rift do this one thing for him? Why the crates? The unexplainable hooded figures?  
He chalked it up to too much wine.  
He crawled into bed and for a few moments contented himself by watching Franz as he read the magazine. Still, he couldn’t keep his mind off of the conversation.  
“…keep an eye on Franz.” These were Napoleon’s parting words.  
Arthur didn’t want to think anymore. He’s had enough of thinking. Arthur took Franz by the hand that he was using to flip the magazine pages; he linked their fingers together.  
——  
It was a sleepless night for Franz. As usual, he was wide awake while Arthur was out like a light next to him. Franz laid still for a while, listening to the distant sounds of the sea and the ship’s engine. He still felt that urge, the dark mood drawing him to his desk like a leash. Franz had already paid dearly for it on this trip and was determined to not totally ruin it, especially when there were mages on board that knew too much.  
Franz sighed and wrapped his arms around Arthur.  
“Everything’s better when we’re walking side by side, isn’t it, dear?” Franz whispered.  
Arthur was groaning in his sleep.  
——  
Memories. Arthur’s memories flashed before his eyes.  
A violin in the fireplace. The flames lick at the resin and the varnish. The strings snap with such force to break the violin’s neck. The white horsehair on the bow, now ash grey, now gone. The violin collapsing inward into itself, disintegrating.  
The scene changes. Early morning in a camp. An empty space next to his messy cot. A retreating figure, a shadow, a woman, disappearing into light. His blue wool coat is missing. He is cold.  
The scene changes. Nighttime, a bloody field. Blücher stands beside Arthur. The watch reads 2200. The battle is over. Around him, men and horses and guns lay scattered and broken in the mud.  
The scene changes. An intersection, bleached gray by the sun. Shiny cars flying past like beetles. Arthur shouts and runs across the street, looking for someone, anyone, who could help him get home. A car screeches towards him and hits.  
Arthur woke with a start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the title comes from the Evangelion episode. Yes, the music note crop tops and tights are from that episode. I would ask you to not judge but considering that I'm writing this kind of fanfiction I have no right to say that  
> (original chapter posted 12/27/15)


	4. A Syncing Feeling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Franz and Arthur undergo a series of tests.

A cold summer morning. The broken sink had been stopped with a pair of rubber gloves. Josephine had a harder time fixing the rift between her and Napoleon. She kept looking off to the side as he interrogated her on PIRCH, on Rosalind and Ada, on anything else she could have been doing in the short years she had in this world. 

“Napoleon. I can’t tell you anything else.”  
“What-why not?” Napoleon said. He angrily took a sip of coffee. “You know that I’m not going to rat you out.”  
“Of course I do. I’m just trying to keep a low profile.”  
Josephine’s eyes shined. She was clearly holding something back and Napoleon knew he shouldn’t test her.  
“Would it be alright if I do some investigations of my own?”  
“What?”  
“Doesn’t everyone have an Internet site these days? I can find all the people you’re looking for with the um...what’s it called?”  
“Computer.”  
“No, the thing you can write in.”  
“Document.”  
“Uhh....anyways, that’s not the point. But I will do what I can.” Napoleon swiftly got up and rushed upstairs before Josephine could say anything. She heard the door slam and sighed.

It would be another week at least until Josephine could show her face in public. And what was she going to do with all of that time? Josephine looked outside. Her roses were still lush and pretty despite the chilly weather. If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. 

Josephine took out her phone and called Rosalind.

“Dr. Rosalind Franklin speaking.”  
“Good morning, Rosalind. Or is it evening over there?”  
“Evening. But it doesn’t matter, you know how my job is...”  
Josephine smiled to herself. “Did you get the data yet? Cruise ship data?”  
“Oh, yes! Very promising results, if a bit boring.”  
“Really.”  
“I don’t want to get into all the technical details, but there will be a lot to talk about once we get back to the folks at Cambridge. There would have been things to discuss regardless of what happened, really. Magic-science integration is all the rage right now and we’re on the cutting edge.”  
“Glad to hear it. My, I feel silly for putting all of my scientific energy into horticulture.”  
“Josephine!”  
“It’s true, though...”  
There was a loud crackling sound on Rosalind’s side.  
“Look at this. Alright, I know you can’t actually look, but - listen!” Rosalind flipped through a thick notebook like it was a deck of cards. “You’re doing excellent work as an agent already.”  
“That’s the problem. I blew my cover.”  
“You what?”  
Josephine took a deep breath. “I blew my cover. I took Napoleon with me to PIRCH and he accidentally activated a hidden door. So I had to disengage. Violently.”  
“You’re remarkably calm about this, Your Majesty.”  
“A skill I learned as empress.”  
“Right, right...” Rosalind sighed. “Just tell me who knows what.”  
“I hit the Manager with a chair, ran, and told Napoleon everything later. I don’t know if he believes me or not, but he’s not angry with me.”  
“You told someone?”  
“How else could I have explained my behavior there? The chair? The sneaking around? Why I had to flee the scene immediately?”  
“Here’s the thing about Napoleon, he’s such a wild card that I don’t think we could trust him to follow our-”  
“And I saw Refugee!” Josephine almost shouted.  
Rosalind was silent for almost a silent minute. Josephine figured that she was writing things down but she could almost see her rubbing her temples in frustration and pacing around the apartment.  
“You did this today?” Rosalind finally asked.  
“No. It was four days ago.”  
“Thank goodness. That means they aren’t totally sure who you are.”  
“How? I was on security footage. Multiple guards and the Manager saw me.”  
“If they took ‘lady who hit our boss with a chair’ and ‘person who keeps breaking into our building’, and put two and two together, you and Napoleon would have been sniped at the grocery store yesterday.”  
“Well, that’s why I’ve been staying home all week.”  
“Glad to hear it. For now, avoid all PIRCH-related activity. Right now the real thrust of our work is going to be the data coming out of the cruise ships, and you don’t have anything to do with that. Think of it like a vacation. You have more than earned it.”

Rosalind hung up. Josephine put the phone down and sighed. Exile wasn’t much of a refuge. If anything, she felt like a rat hiding underneath a pantry, stealing bits and pieces to get by. With nothing better to do, Josephine took down her hair, and using the TV screen as a mirror, put it back up again.  
_________

“Why doesn’t anything in this stupid house work? GOD!” Napoleon was about 3 megabytes away from punching out his laptop. They can send men to the moon and put music in a little box but they can’t make an essay load in less than a minute? He watched the screen and thought that he would gladly burn out this hard drive if it meant getting to the bottom of this horror. 

He calmed down a bit when the familiar red logo popped up and his frustration was replaced with nervous energy. This, this familiar urge, now this he could work with. With swift fingers and determination, Napoleon pulled up articles and photos and interviews. When was everyone called to life? What did modern experts think of it? He already knew that Arthur was called by someone in California that he had to escape from, and his stomach turned a little at the thought.

“Honey, it’s half past noon already! Why won’t you come down?”

“I’m busy, Josephine. I can’t!”

He heard her dress swish across the tile and back into the living room. Napoleon was very glad that she couldn’t see his room right now. It was a nest of papers, and the printer was still churning out a few more documents. Napoleon stacked everything in chronological order and then propped it up against his bed. Nothing more to this than decoding an army’s parts and its weaknesses. Right?

_________

“Aaaaand that’s your fifth mistake! Geez, Franz, are you even awake?” Jo clapped their hands in front of his face while Arthur scowled. He would not mind the daily testing so much if these _children_ weren't so condescending. 

Franz sighed before assuming the position. His crop top slid down his shoulders and hung uncomfortably around his neck. Arthur was completely tensed and tried to focus on the opening beep. Left, right, right, back...the room was filled with music and cheerily-shouted cues from the children, but as far as the couple was concerned it was silent.

Another badly timed step that turned into a slip. Arthur helped Franz peel himself off the floor before sitting up. Jen and Jo were snickering softly at the men.

"I don’t want to find out what happens if we fail this test,” Arthur said.  
Franz couldn’t think of something reassuring to say. He rubbed his eyes and sighed. Rifted. The machine kept using that word. Neither Rifted knew what it meant: they had always been referred to by their titles.  
“In any case, I have my portion of the routine down pat. It’s all up to you, Franz.” Arthur turned away from him with a tired look in his eyes.  
“Geez, do you think we should tell them?” Jo whispered to Jen. “Dude looks like he’s going to kill Franz if he messes up again.”  
“I don’t think he’d believe me if I told him what the test is for. I don’t blame him.” Jen rebooted the machine. “I have a better idea.”  
“What?”  
“Set up the test so it displays a ‘You Passed!’ message after the next round. Like this,” Jen opened a hidden menu and pressed some buttons.  
“Hmm...Ada said she needs at least 12 rounds of data. How many do we have already?”  
Jen opened another menu. “We have 18. Oops.”  
Jo shrugged. “Alright, we’ll let them pass. Hey!” they shouted. “Get ready, it’s now or never!”  
There was a lump in Franz’s throat.  
“What...what do you mean, never?”  
“If you fail this we turn you into frogs,” Jo said. “Alright, here we go...”

“The Cambridge Synchronization test is a multistage cooperative task that gets more difficult as it progresses. The purpose of this test is to assess the physical and mental properties of Rifteds. The test will be repeated until both subjects successfully complete the pattern, or either subject makes more than five mistakes. Follow the instructions displayed on the screen. Get set...ready...go!”

Both men danced as if they were possessed. Several times they bumped shoulders and Franz nearly swept Arthur off the floor with a careless kick. Jo kept an eye on the error counter.

“Seven...eight...” they mumbled. “Don’t do well under pressure, huh?”

The final notes played and both men reached out for the last light. They fell onto the floor to catch their breath.

“Yaaay, you passed. Congratulations, Your Graces,” Jo said.

“Really?!” Franz said, bolting upright. “Arthur, we did it!”  
Arthur nodded and brushed himself off.  
Jen fumbled with her clipboard and then dropped it.  
“Now that you’ve shown how well you can cooperate, we can just put you in the sync chambers,” she said.  
“Hold on, hold on. Chambers? What are you planning to do now?” Arthur asked. Last night’s conversation. He didn’t want to lose sight of Franz.  
“Oh, it’s a walk in the park compared to these tests. You just take a seat inside and relax while we measure...things. You might see stuff. That’s what Ros thinks, but we won’t know for sure until we actually USE the chambers on someone...”

Arthur grimaced at the hooded figures. The only thing keeping him from punching both of them out was the gleam of knives on their belts and the ever-present glow of their brooches. He didn’t want to know why these children were armed to the teeth. But first, Franz. As long as he was alright, Arthur would be alright as well.

“How are you feeling?”  
“I didn’t fail you,” Franz whispered under his breath.  
“Franz, did you say something?”  
“What? No, sorry for making you nervous.

Arthur just stared and then took his hand. He had no idea what Franz’s problem was but he liked him regardless.  
_________

Napoleon thought his eyes were fried, or at least a little dry from staring at the tiny black letters. Whenever he closed his eyes for more than a moment, tears would spring up. Wearily, he rubbed his eyes to clear his vision, searching for the clock on his screen. He squinted. 5:32 pm. _That's not so bad; I can still catch dinner._ Josephine must be worried sick. Napoleon stood up and stretched his back and limbs, giving them a few twists, hearing a crack or two. He turned to the window and drew back the curtains to see the dark blue sky, with a thin strip of yellow light on the horizon.

Downstairs, the light from the TV illuminated Josephine's rounded features, painting her blue. She was watching a documentary about jellyfish.

She heard him approach. "I ordered pizza tonight, if that's alright with you." she said without a hint of emotion. Neither of them had gotten over the wonder of food delivery, but Josephine was noticeably...subdued. Her anxiety had been replaced by sadness and she had barely said anything since the incident at PIRCH. She usually didn’t watch any TV, but now she was sitting on the couch with her eyes glued to the screen and a cold, untouched plate in front of her.

Napoleon sank down next to Josephine, pretending to follow the jellyfish, but his mind was still buzzing with thoughts. Thoughts about PIRCH, about that thin man behind the walls, that thin man and his duke on a ship far, far away. He reached for his phone, but hesitated. Napoleon had more than enough issues at home.

“Josephine, aren’t you hungry?”  
She blinked twice.  
“You can have all you want.” .  
________

"Reeeeaaady the sync chambeeeerrrrrs!" Jo boomed (or rather, attempted to boom).

"Bad timing," Jen said.

The hooded figures led Arthur and Franz along a thin metal gangway, all while whispering amongst themselves, occasionally pointing to a weird contraption or two. Arthur could hear maybe a sentence or two.

"...fit a sync chamber in a ship?"

"Pfft, let it happen..."

"...says you!" This one came out a little more excited than a whisper. "Weren't you the one who giggled..." The voices dropped low again.

Franz pulled on Arthur's sleeve and leaned down. "After this, we'll go to the ship's bookstore, right?" He had more height, sure, but he also had the sort of haunting puppy eyes that was less intimidating and more like gave the sort of feeling like you wanted to wrap him up in a blanket and give him hot chocolate and softly pat him on the head. Um. Arthur was taken aback. Oh dear.

"Um, yes. O-of course," Arthur couldn't catch his breath for a second. Off-guard. Not fair. A military man mustn't be off-guard.

Franz was planning on checking the bookstore to see if they had journals for sale. He had to document the look in Arthur's face just now.

Their reveries were interrupted when the hooded figures stopped abruptly. The men nearly bumped into them.

"Here we are." Jo announced.

"Now get in the robot." Jen said.

"What robot? I don't see a robot? What is a robot?" Arthur asked.

"Not robot time--ch!" Jo jabbed Jen with an elbow. "Before the robots, you gotta use these things first." Jo pointed at a liquidy chamber with a lot of metal contraptions...(Arthur was not particularly of a modern mind, and he did not understand what he was looking at).

Franz shuddered, but not at the sight. He felt a tingling sensation on his nape, as if hundreds of tiny needles were pricking him over and over again. He pulled his shoulders up and rolled his head to get rid of the feeling, but it didn't work.

Arthur noticed. "Are you feeling well, dear?" He asked.

"Yes, just..." Franz trailed off. "Probably just the temperature." He tugged at his collar. Arthur squeezed his shoulder and told him that they ought to follow the hooded figures.

“I should have disposed of you years ago.”

Franz nearly jumped out of his skin. Did Arthur say that? No, he was looking intently at the array of wires and diodes dangling off the walls. Nobody else was close enough to hear a thing. A mild bitter taste found its way in his tongue.

And as he heard the metal rattle to life, he definitely felt a stab of something like fear in his spine.

Both men were sitting in the same metal capsule, side by side in seats with locks that wrapped around their limbs. They were bathed in a turbid, amber liquid that smelled halfway between blood and chicken broth. Arthur slowly opened his eyes and grew accustomed to the warmth on his eyeballs.

He looked to his left. Franz was peaceful, eyes closed as small trails of bubbles from the machinery landed in his eyelashes. He was breathing steadily. Wait a minute...he could breathe in this stuff? He had been breathing with no issues for the past 10 minutes. Arthur opened his mouth and no bubbles came out. The liquid tasted entirely like blood. He wanted to shake Franz awake but then a chill came over him.

Somehow, through the cloudy medium, he could see snow. It was snowing and the trees were bare. Arthur couldn't tell if it was bubbles or ice blurring his vision, but either way it was very cold. A translucent arm reached out to him. He watched in wonder and horror as another Arthur wrapped a scarf around his neck. Who...who was that? Arthur tried to reach up and push it away but the scarf was covering his nose and he couldn't breathe and-

"HEY!" One of the hooded figures was banging on the capsule. "Keep your heart rate down, Franz. Get to Arthur's level and try to sync up."

Arthur snapped out of the vision. He looked around and he was back inside a chamber of panels and lights.

"They can't keep track of their heart rates in there." the second figure said.

"JUST CALM DOWN!"

Franz was leaning forward as far as he could while staring upwards at some unseen horror. Arthur tried to pull his hands out of the seat, but they were locked firmly into the metal. Agitated, he tried to reach Franz with his head and found that he could sort of stand up in the capsule. Arthur tried to pull himself out.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean it! Daddy, let me in!" Franz said. It was uncannily clear and unmistakably Franz’s voice that Arthur heard. But there was nothing but bubbles coming out of his mouth. 

Arthur tried to yell and no sound came out. What was going on? He couldn't hear anything from outside.

Then it dawned on him, that he was hearing Franz's thoughts. They couldn't talk in the medium, but it was letting them share memories. Arthur did remember giving Franz a scarf once...he couldn't begin to fathom what Franz was seeing right now. A father? Letting him in? Where was that kind of memory coming from?

 

_Oh god, what if he sees the battlefield?_

 

"Hey! Franz! This isn't real, it’s just the chamber!”

No response.

"The children said we might see things, remember?"

Franz slowly stopped his struggling and settled back into his seat. He turned towards Arthur with wild eyes and clenched teeth. A slice of the night sky flashed into Arthur's field of vision.

The buzzer sounded, and the liquid began to drain out of the chamber.

"Please hold still while we put on the decompression masks. If we don't do this step you'll drown the moment you leave the capsule. Your lungs are full of fluid right now."

A pair of clear plastic tubes descended upon their faces and sucked. Hard. Both men gasped as everything was sucked out of their lungs and then they returned to the familiar rhythm of breathing air.

Arthur’s anxiety and confusion turned to anger. "That was absolutely uncalled for! You can't do that more gently?" he shouted. The fluid pooled around his shins poured out as Jen opened the door.

"We have to do it fast or you suffocate with the tube on. Sorry, I don't make the rules here."

Arthur glared at her indignantly before he heard Franz groaning next to him.

"FRANZ! Are you alright?!"

“A...Arthur...” The seats let go of their limbs and Franz rubbed his face with his bony hands. He stumbled out of the chamber and onto the metal walkway.

"I’m gonna go out on a limb here and assume this is what Ros meant by a bad trip," Jo said to Jen. They turned towards Arthur, and even in the floodlights, their face was still completely hidden in shadow.

"What exactly did you see, anyways?"

"Well..." he didn't feel like sharing that little moment with the scarf. None of the moments in there, really. "I saw stars, I believe."

"Come again?"

"Stars."

"Uhh...cool.” Jo searched for words. "We'll see if anything comes out of that in tomorrow's session. See you then!"

Arthur waved halfheartedly at the children before walking away with Franz leaning on his shoulder.

"We're still going to the bookstore, right?"

"Of course, are you OK?"

"I think I left my wallet in the room again." Franz noticed that Arthur's skin still smelled like blood while his clothes were perfectly dry. 

"Are you SURE you're fine?" Franz just nodded and walked with Arthur. It was a sunny day and the deck was full of people enjoying the weather. Their sea-soaked footprints masked the trail left by the two men, neither of which wanted to let go of each other.  
____________

Captain Ching Shih sat on a bench near the stern of her ship, watching the sunset. The rest of her fleet was following close by, and the low golden light let her see distinct people running about on the decks. 

Ching was a fit, middle-aged woman with tanned skin and graying hair that she kept in a tight bun. The only thing setting her apart from the rest of the crew was a brass, shield-shaped badge on her vest. The rest of her gear; bandolier, rubber boots, gloves, assault rifle, was all rather unassuming. She ran a tight ship but was not interested in cruelty for the sake of cruelty. Respect lasted longer than fear. 

Ching had a habit of taking a little time to relax with a tall Thermos of tea right around dusk. It kept her sane and gave her time to think, away from the endless questions and requests from her crew. But as her fleet drew closer and closer to Hawaii, the nights grew warmer and the tea just didn’t feel right. 

It was June 20th. If the navigators were correct, they were right on schedule and would begin circling Oahu in a day or two, and after that it was just a matter of waiting to intercept the cruise. Then it was on to Shanghai. 

Ching had not talked to any of the other ladies in months. Phone service was spotty at sea and it was a bad idea to take calls from a wanted criminal. Naturally, Ching couldn’t say anything about it without risking her crew’s morale, and she had nobody else to talk to, but it was driving her up the wall. She kept asking herself what the matter was. 

You’ve been on much longer voyages than this, why are you only getting uneasy now? 

After all, Ching had nothing to fear from an unarmed passenger vessel that had already been infiltrated by friendly agents. Maybe that was it. For once there was something pleasant to look forward to. 

Ching got up and started walking back to the bridge. It was getting dark and the wind blew wisps of hair into Ching’s eyes. 

Friendly agents. She was still half-convinced that Rosalind was joking around when she said they were only 14 years old. But it wasn't like Rosalind to joke about PIRCH-related matters. 

_We’ll see about that._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm Eva trash and LCL smells like a combination of LB agar and blood you can't convince me otherwise (original chapter posted 12/29/15 holy shit I'm a slow writer)


	5. Royal Mess

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *Mission Impossible theme plays*

Back in San Francisco, Josephine was watching as Napoleon slept on the couch. It was 11 PM and she was debating whether or not to turn off the TV.

"Oh well, you fell asleep here by yourself." Nothing he could say about it. She slipped past the kitchen and then ran upstairs. She would need something more practical than this dress. After some careful deliberation, Josephine came downstairs in a navy blue hoodie and jeans. Good, the backpack was still there, stocked with everything she needed. She pushed the back door open before running into the center of the backyard. 

The moon was bright, and the sight of silvery moonlight casting shadows through the roses made up for the lack of color. Josephine surveyed her surroundings. Nobody but her could make it through these thorns in complete darkness. Josephine grabbed the bottom of her backpack to confirm that the shears were still there. She didn’t look back at the glowing television inside before taking off into the night.

Thompson Street, and then a left at the highway. Signs and billboards passed by as Josephine ran towards Pirch. She was short of breath and immediately regretted not fully utilizing her gym membership. There was just enough light to make out Josephine’s silhouette against the sidewalk. If it were any other time, with a night like this, she would be sitting in Malmaison with the roses and counting the stars. She slowed down in front of the entrance to Pirch and sighed. 

The building was large and resembled a messy collection of flattened cartons save for the wire dome peeking between two corners. Josephine squinted as the moonlight outlined the wire mesh in silver. As she circled the complex, she realized that there was no central courtyard in the building. The wire cage was merely attached to the warehouse in the back, almost as an afterthought. Josephine stuck her fingers in the holes and shook the cage. Nothing that wire cutters couldn’t handle. 

20 minutes of twisting and cutting later, Josephine could push open a flap in the mesh wide enough to crawl through. She wriggled her way in, scratching her skin and clothes on the sharp wire. Josephine hit the concrete too hard and needed a few moments to stand up. In the distance, shadowed under the building’s eaves, there were two doors. As she approached them, the smell of rain grew stronger and stronger. Through the crack of one door, Josephine could see a faint blue glow. 

This has to be it, Josephine thought. She wanted to rush immediately to the glowing light, but she clenched her fist and took a deep breath. This is a delicate job. She must not be callous. Those people could still be in the facility. 

Josephine edged closer, her body almost in a crouching stance, going as slowly and quietly as possible. She stuck to the shadows to avoid being seen. Inches from the door, and the smell of rain was almost overwhelming. She took a peek and covered her mouth at what she saw. 

Bodies–dozens, hundreds?–floated in a viscous electric blue fluid inside a giant glass box, some with contorted expressions, and all of them naked. They looked like tall, thin corpses, empty vessels with empty gazes. A feeling of recollection flickered in her mind. She has seen this man before. 

But she was prepared for the worst. She braced herself and slipped inside, careful not to let the door close behind her. She placed a small doorstop to keep it ajar. 

She scanned the room for other exits: a ladder which led up to the roof, some windows which might be opened in the top left corner, and the door she entered through. A quick getaway would be difficult here. 

Now, she pulled out a flashlight and looked at the tables flanking the room. She started in a counterclockwise motion, careful not to disturb any of the scattered papers. Most of them contained poems and vignettes about…kitchen appliances? She paid them no mind. 

Near the back corner, under the windows, she found her target. These were the papers containing information about the opening of the rift. She could not take them home, but she could at least take pictures of them. 

Josephine managed three slightly blurry pictures–her hands beginning to shake from nervousness–when she heard the door creak. Startled, she sprinted to the back of the glass case, clamping her hand against her ragged breathing. Some of the empty gazes turned to her. 

It occurred to her that she couldn’t see who or what caused the creak. 

The door opened wider, letting in more of the (un)natural moonlight. The footsteps were getting closer. Tap. Tap. Tap. It stopped. It then occurred to Josephine that if the footsteps decide to walk to the back, she would be completely exposed by that blue light. 

Her main escape route was blocked, the window was clearly visible, and she was just too far from the ladder. Her best option was to hide and wait. But where to hide? 

No, it’s not a matter of hiding. It’s a matter of not being found, that’s all. She rolled soundlessly to her right, hiding around the corner just in time. The footsteps were definitely closing in on her now. If she turns around the corner again, she’ll be out in the open. If she stays, the footsteps might reach her. 

Another sound at the door. It was a gentle tapping of manicured fingers. 

The footsteps stopped and receded. Josephine did not dare to look. She heard a heated conversation, then the footsteps started again, sounding more distant by the step. Josephine waited five minutes before she could breathe again. She ran to the door, but–

Her doorstop was missing. No. That means they know she’s here! And her exit #1 was blocked! She checked the doorknobs–no such luck. 

She heard footsteps. 

More footsteps 

They were getting closer.

So the ladder it is, then. Josephine dashed as fast she could. They creaked under the weight. 

Nimble as a cat, she pulled herself up onto the roof just as the door swung open.

The gust of fresh air filled Josephine’s lungs, restoring her energy. Now her primary goal was to get the hell out of there. Determinedly she slid down the pipes on the side of the building. As soon as she touches ground she rolls into running position. There’s no time to crawl through the hole. She vaulted herself up past the top of the fence. 

Yooooo did anyone see that!? Those were her thoughts as she ran home. 

There, Napoleon was still sound asleep. The television showed a replay of the jellyfish, washing the couple in an electric blue light. 

When she looked at the jellyfish on screen, she saw the empty gazes stare back at her.

Franz and Arthur were bent over a newly worn-out journal. They had been trying to decipher each other’s scribblings in their cabin. Each man sat facing the other, and the bed was creaking with their every move. 

“You see? The others are probably like us, just living out their lives somewhere in the modern world.” Franz circled a timeline that looked more like a bird’s nest.

“But we still don’t know how many there are, Franz. All we know is that the rifts were opened three years ago and there are companies using them.”

“Arthur, what do you think they do with the others?” 

“Get to the point.” By now Arthur was used to Franz’s knack for looping around whatever they were trying to discuss. It was cute when they...never mind. No time for those memories now. 

“What are you trying to say?”

“Where do they keep the other copies? What do they do with the copies when they’ve served their purpose?” Arthur stopped at the burning eyes staring at him. Was Franz actually...angry right now? Arthur let his words sink in and rubbed his temples. 

“Oh God.” His hands were shaking. Franz’s eyes were glossy and his chest was rising and falling erratically. Perhaps telling him now would be better than making him upset two separate times.

“I have a confession to make. Do you remember that phone call from Napoleon a few days ago? I haven’t told you what he told me.”

“Is this about the rifts?”

“Yes! It is. Napoleon found another one.”

“Another one? A copy of who?”  
Arthur sighed and leaned in over the table, searching through the broken masses of text in the journal. What was happening to this cruise? What was happening to them?

“You. Another you.” 

“I knew about the Hunger Games but...oh no...” Franz looked side to side. “What was he living in?”

“An underground chamber. According to Napoleon he was wearing some sort of harness and a metal mask. But there was no doubt that he was another version of you.”

There were a thousand thoughts flying through Franz’s mind, and he took a few deep breaths before taking back the journal and writing something down. 

“What do you think we should do about him?” It was true. What were they supposed to do with this information? Arthur was wishing for another phone call to come to break the silence.

Franz noted his husband’s silence and continued talking. “I believe that the most moral course of action would be to free him. Whether it’s by petition, or by th-the law, or...” He was looking straight at him now. Everything started to melt away, and Arthur’s face said enough to scare Franz.

“Why do we have to free him? He’s none of our business, and it’s not going to be an easy process! Franz, you, you wrote all of your books about the law, you know there’s no happy ending.”

“Honey, I don’t know what else to do with that call! What can we do?”

“Exactly! It’s just like the ones from the Hunger Games, and there’s nothing else to it. The entire rift situation is unfortunate and yes, I will admit, disturbing, but we are not them and we have our own lives.” 

“They’re still...”

“We’re not doing this.”

Franz thrust himself backwards and balled up the covers in his hands. It was true. He was just a writer. Even if the Stanford people took him in again, what could he do? 

“Franz, just let it wait until we’re back home, alright? This is our time to just enjoy each other and relax. The synchronization stuff isn’t bothering you too much, is it?” Even if ignoring the issue did nothing to solve it, it would certainly make the honeymoon more bearable. Besides, Arthur needed time to decide what they should do next. Maybe there was new information from Napoleon’s side.

India. Spain. Belgium. He could have died at any moment then, but the men carried on with their tasks with only devotion to the Queen in mind. Everyone, all the officers at least, knew what they were having. It was a war, and Bonaparte needed to be removed. But now there was the lurking knowledge of a dark underbelly beneath Arthur’s new life. 

What was Bonaparte dragging everyone into this time?

That night, nobody could sleep. Franz had taken all of the blankets and was hugging them like they were a stuffed animal. At first he thought it was just the tropical heat out at sea. Or it was the insomnia working its magic again. He rolled over and saw Arthur staring at the ceiling, blue eyes flickering in the dim light. 

“Don’t worry about it, we can do it. If we do it together we’ll be fine.”

Franz smiled as a hand reached out to gently caress his cheek.

______

The aesthetician’s new sutures hurt too much to let her sleep for more than a few hours at a time. She eased her way out of the hospital bed and pulled her IV stand out of the corner. Walking through the cold concrete halls of Pirch made her feel something nice. Joy. Purely, surgically designed joy. Her expression didn’t change as she walked towards a distant light. The aesthetician never had any painkillers in her nightly IV, but any reason to feel joy was good for her. 

She stopped in front of the Tank and leaned gently against the glass. As usual, all of the Refugees were incubating, and the blue light from the tank shimmered against her cheekbones. Once, when she was a little girl, the manager explained that they didn’t need food or air or water because the fluid provided all. All they needed was time. He said that about the aesthetician, too when she studied the writings. It amazed her that she was like the Refugee himself in any way. 

The aesthetician watched dozens of thin, naked bodies float by. One Refugee gently thumped against the glass and then drifted off again towards the bottom of the Tank. She furrowed her brows and squinted at him. Something was different about them tonight. Their faces were different. 

A different Franz floated upwards next to her. She shuffled to the left and then caught a large tangle of bodies following him.

They were all smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Even more EVA shit, because I hate writing and creativity,


	6. Guns and Ships

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Guns! And ships! And so the balance shifts (dangerously from side to side as the hull rapidly collects water)!

“So, where is this cruise ship headed?” Arthur asked the pacing guard aloud in order to break the tension. He sat stroking Franz’s hair, whose head was laid on his lap. Franz hummed a tuneless sound, contemplating how they ended up in the cruise ship’s version of a holding brig…  
—–  
After that heavy, strange conversation about the time loops, they both decided to clear the air with something less rift-related and more of the alcoholic persuasion. As it happened, there was a wine-tasting event of sorts happening on the deck that night, and Arthur insisted that Franz had to try that bottle of vintage from 1815 because it is **such** an important year they **must** partake–

–Except nobody told Franz that you are supposed to spit the wine after tasting it. Franz did not. What Franz did, however, was get moderately tipsy. He excused himself from the table. Arthur, meanwhile, still affected by the conversation and now worried about his husband, found himself a little snappier at the staff and other connoisseurs. And maybe he boasted a bit about his connection to the year–“Pah! 1815, a vintage? You should have SEEN 1815! What a time, indeed?” and all that jazz. 

Franz gripped the cold metal railings of the balcony, eyes wide at the moon, then squinting. Then wide eyes again, then squinting. A concerned older lady (who, if one did the math, was probably older than Franz) looked up at him and asked, “Dear, why are you standing on the rails like so?”

“Hm? Oh, ‘cuz thass a diszco ball, engh?” Franz words slurred and his legs swayed in time with the ship, but his mind was not there. In fact, what he was seeing through the drunk haze were disco lights, and the blood thrumming in his ears sounded vaguely like the heavy bass of a DJ’s playlist. And this vertical railing he’s holding onto…it’s not a rail…it’s more like a pole really…

The old woman–bless her poor octogenarian heart–luckily left the scene before she was exposed to such artful displays of flexibility, grace, and athleticism. Lucky for Franz’s and Arthur’s dignity also, someone was there to lay down the law.

Unfortunately for them, that someone appeared to be to faceless hooded figures. 

“Should we get this on video or…” one of the hooded figures asked the other. 

The other one said, “I’m not sure if this will ever happen again…but we do have to be responsible,” making exaggerated hand quotes at the last word. 

“Too late, I’m recording.” From the sleeves of the first hooded figure, a small black camera lens could be seen slightly peeking out.

“OI!” The yelp didn’t come from the hooded figures, but from Arthur himself, who by now realised that Franz was drunkenly attempting to perform his signature dance move from that time before they met. 

By now, the organizers of the wine-tasting have gotten a gist of how much trouble this couple was causing, and they were moving in to subdue them.

Arthur dashed to Franz’s side, grabbing his hand and attempting to pull him away from the pole. Franz, seemingly waking up from his stupor, hesitated for just a second before releasing the pole without doing the signature move. (The hooded figure with the camera grumbled.)

“We have to go. Now.” Arthur said, slinging Franz’s arm around his shoulder. Franz, meanwhile, babbled about the earnings he made that day and how much he rakes in with his dancing, and, “Oh! I could buy a typewriter with that money–”

They were not fast enough on their feet, unfortunately. The security guards eventually caught them hobbling towards a frozen yogurt bar with the acronym FROG in big, papery pink letters.

Once the authorities were sure that they had been existing in this timeline long enough to be issued citizenship, and not a spontaneous tear in the time rift, they were escorted to the brig to “sleep the hangover off”. Not two minutes later, the two hooded figures got thrown in the cell in front.

Arthur attempted at small talk, of which he really has none. “So,” he asked the hooded figures. “What’re you two in for?”

One figure scoffed. “So many things.”

The second one deadpanned. “What aren’t we here for?”

 

The two haven’t said a word since.  
—–  
Arthur continued twirling Franz’s hair. He noticed that Franz flinched whenever his hands drifted down to the neck. He thought it odd yet endearing.

He asked again, nobody in particular, where the ship was headed.

“Shanghai,” the guard answered gruffly. At this, one hooded figure seemed to startle, and the other one turned in confusion.

“Wait wait wait,” the startled one stood up and turned to the other. “Shanghai, like, in China right?”

“…yes. What else would it be?” The confused one, if the eyes were visible, would have been looking suspiciously.

“Ah, you see, um. Remember how I have a thing for pirates?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And cool women?”

“You did a thing.”

“Possibly.”

“She’s there, isn’t she.”

Arthur raised a hand. “Pardon me, who is this 'she’ that you both–”

 

BOOM! A loud shot cut off his sentence. The guard rushed to the deck, leaving them. Franz shot up and clutched Arthur’s waist. The ship swayed. The hooded figures sighed. Arthur knew the sound all too well. He thought he’d left this behind in the shores of Europe–

“That–” BOOM! “–would be her.” 

Arthur’s mind scrambled quickly to find a plan of action, any action. “Who is the captain of this ship?” BOOM!

Franz pulled him tighter. “Honey, what are you planning to do?” He caught a glint of hard steel in Arthur’s eyes, like the look he must have had when he scanned the battlefield or the ocean for enemies. He was determined, whatever he was planning.

Arthur pulled Franz up so they were eye level, and said, “I’m taking command of this ship.”

————

Josephine was unsure if she should wake Napoleon from his nap. His neck will hurt in the morning if he stays on the couch. She smiled fondly for a split second, and nobody but her knew. 

Her phone vibrated on the countertop, flashing a message alert. She picked up her phone and squinted at the bright screen, reading the message:

“The bird is on the driftwood.” 

The message was from an unregistered number, but she knew who it was. She called…

“Ada dear, what are you talking about?”

“Ugh, use the codenames! The codenames!” Ada Lovelace whined on the end of the line.

“Look, can I talk to Rosalind, please?”

“You aren’t very fun, you know,” Ada shot back before handing the phone to Rosalind.

“Hello,” Rosalind said. “I see you’ve had a good evening? How’s the spouse?”

“Back to business, ladies.” Josephine urged. “What’s the news?”

“Well, we still haven’t really figured out how they can make multiple versions of the same person through one rift tear–” Rosalind started.

Ada interrupted. “–but we do have your men! Or should we say, your man’s man and your man’s man’s man?” Even through just hearing them Jospehine could tell that Rosalind was glaring at Ada incredulously.

“…are you your father’s daughter?” Josephine could hear Rosalind talking to Ada. Rosalind then took the phone. “Well, we don’t quite have them yet. But we’ve gotten the signal from 'the bird’ has in fact spotted the cruise ship and is heading towards boarding it posthaste.” 

Josephine went into the kitchen and got herself a drink. “Alright. Anything else?”

Rosalind seemed to pause on the other end. “Um, the man you saw about a week ago…was he the same man in the tank?”

“Same face, yes.” 

“And the same man as the one Wellesley married, right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, we’ve got our work cut out for us.” Rosalind tapped her nails against the phone and let out a big breath. “I’ve got the basic formula for cloning, but you should see what Ada found about him in these hidden files…”

Ada was still furiously tapping away at her keyboard. Rosalind blearily looked up from her magazine and squinted at the blinding screen.

“It’s already 2 in the morning, can you please finish the download?” she yawned and tossed the magazine away. Scientific American didn’t make for good reading past a certain time of night.

“Come on, you’ve been here long enough to know that I can’t really control the speed. It’s all dependent on the internet connection we have and the number of routers in the room.” Ada paused to rename some files. “And last time I checked, I was not the one who objected to spending an extra 30 pounds on a better router.” 

Rosalind groaned and rolled off the couch. How did Ada do this every night?

“The full cast records and the event logs are large files. You won’t have to do anything until morning when I’ve isolated the entries of interest.”

“Fine...I’m going to....ouch...bed now.” 

She stepped over piles of cable and manila folders on the way to the bathroom. What sort of life was this? She gets a second chance at everything, she finally gets that position at Oxford, and now her talents are being used on investigating the supernatural. Granted, the same could be said for Ada, the noblewoman dragged into the depths of her own curiosity. Rosalind yawned and turned off all the lights. 

Ada leaned back in her chair and watched her cursor flicker. She really hadn’t expected Napoleon to be making his own investigations. But this was a good development, and that perhaps Napoleon’s strategic knowledge could help them plan further expeditions for data. Data, data, data. Numbers made the world turn, and Ada was a master of them. Her phone buzzed.

The pirate queen had sent her a photo. It was a selfie of her standing on deck and grinning while pirates gathered around turrets and the wind threw her hair across her smile. There was no sign of the targets in the background. Oh well, at least she had sighted the ship. 

Ada texted back. 

“Try to take everyone alive, alright?”

Buzz.

“No guarantees ;P”

_____________

Franz had broken into a cold sweat and buried his face into Arthur’s chest. The deck was in chaos, and chairs and umbrellas were rolling overboard. Another shot rang through the air and a chunk of wood landed next to Arthur.

“What in the world?....” he pulled Franz closer to him and stumbled through the debris. That shadow in the distance was unmistakably a battleship. A modern ship, all sharp edges and turrets, approaching at an alarming rate. What kind of pirate had an aircraft carrier? The cruise ship lurched to the left, and Arthur could barely hold on to the railings. Franz was too tipsy to notice any significant change in his bearings. 

“Come on, we have to get to the bridge immediately!” The pair ran back inside and tripped over panicking tourists. Somehow, Franz found it easier to make his way through the crowds while the floor was swaying and heaving. Another explosion in the distance. Arthur caught a pair of robes sweeping up a stairwell. Everything had kicked into overdrive now. 

“You two! Get to the rails and wait for the lifeboats!” a sailor yelled. She grabbed Arthur’s shoulder and started leading him back outside the building. 

“What do you think you’re doing?” Arthur paused to shift his footing before pushing the sailor away. “You need to take us to the bridge.”

“What? Sir, that’s not going to help our situation-”

“TAKE US THERE.” Arthur glared at the sailor. The beams in the floor were starting to cave in and the carpet smelled of gunpowder. The sailor must have sensed that he held authority, because she turned around and started running up the stairs. 

“Follow me. I’m either going down with the ship or getting fired! Fabulous!”

“Oh, don’t worry.” Franz said. “He knows what he’s doing.” He does, right?

Meanwhile on the other side of the ship, two hooded people were standing on a balcony and yelling. 

“STOP FIRING! WE HAVE THE EQUIPMENT! DON’T SINK THE FUCKING EQUIPMENT!” One figure ran back inside the cabin and came out with a mirror.

“What are you trying to do with that?”

“It’s a signal! You flash the sunlight to the other side and they’ll get our message. Do you know Morse code?”

“Why would I know that? HEY! STOP FIRING! You’re not supposed to use a mirror, you’re supposed to use a white flag. Go get sheets from inside and start waving them.” 

After about 5 minutes of waving and flashing, the figures settled for tying the sheets to the balcony and letting them flutter in the wind. Unpleasant crunching noises started coming out from underneath the hull. The ship swayed and splashed into the waves. The two figures looked at each other before throwing the mirror off the balcony and running downstairs. 

“Our job is to get the ship to Shanghai with all of the chambers and wiring safe and sound. Kafka and Wellington are secondary.”

“What are you trying to say? They’re just going to get taken away on the lifeboats. We still have their address and everything.”

“My point is, we can’t let the ship sink. It would be nice to have the couple with us, but that’s not our priority.”

“I never said anything about going for them first.”

“Just help me think of some spell we can use, OK?”

Come on. Just focus on the task at hand. Several big holes in the hull, things below deck starting to fill up with water. They could feel their robes starting to get heavy with seawater as the pair drew closer to the first hole. Footsteps and voices from above grew more and more muffled in the wet darkness, and then darkness gave way to glowing blue moonlight and jagged metal.

“Here we go. Uh...what do we even rift over for this?” Everything smelled like gunpowder and the remains of the missile were floating away. One figure was about to reach out to a pipe before she noticed that it was melting. 

“Something that’s easy to hold together with magic. And something we have nearby, to guarantee we don’t fuck it up.”

“What do we have? We’re at least 100 miles away from Mexico at this point. It’s just water, water, more water.”

“Deck chairs.” a figure said, only half joking. “Oh, right, it has to be holdable...uh...” they snapped their fingers. “SEA MUD!”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“You don’t know what’s in the mud, there could be anything at the bottom of the sea.”

“That’s not a problem. We both know how clay is like, the easiest thing to mold, and it’s not like anyone is going to come down here. Who cares if the hull is full of crabs?”

A huge spray of water splashed both figures before dragging some debris away.

“Welp....let’s just go with that, then. You still have everything, right?”

The other figure rummaged through their robe before pulling out a colored pencil and grinning.

The pair each drew a large pentagram on the side of the warm metal, letting the wax glide in loops and curls as they inscribed the spell around the pentagrams. Then they both took out box cutters and then nicked their palms.

“Last time we did this we were at my house and my hand STILL got infected. God, I hate this part.”

“We can go wash our hands later. Ready...one, two, THREE!” Both figures pressed their hands against the metal and a flash of green light filled the gaping hole.

“Captain! There’s something glowing in the hull!”

“Give me those binoculars.” Ching Shih looked in wonder as two gray blurs started drawing something out of the glow. So this is what magic looks like. Oh, right, the charges were magicians. The equipment.

“EVERYONE! Cease fire immediately!”

“Who are they? Are they trying to sink the ship?”

“The exact opposite. All hands go to navigation, boarding that ship is our first priority!”

The hooded figures were drawing out huge ropes and piles of mud and having one hell of a time with it all. Maybe the salt and sand stung against her hand wound, but it was just ridiculous fun to be shooting mud all over the place. The sludge started filling in the hole like living cement. Who needs Splatoon when you have magic?

“OH MY GOD, EW EW EW I’M OUTTA HERE!” a pirate threw his binoculars away and started running out of the navigation room.  
“What’s the matter back there?” Ching Shih shouted down the hall. 

“It’s like that freaky cartoon Marco showed me! There’s gross shit coming out of the sea and going into the ship!” 

She leaned over the steering panel to watch and mentally kicked herself for not hiring magicians. Magic could make ships unsinkable. The blurs had run upstairs to a different hole and the deluge of sludge was following them. Then it filled the hole entirely and started to glow with green runes. 

“Oh yeah, we’re getting close enough now!”

“All we have to do is take command of the ship and then get all the tourists back to Mexico. Sent that to the 5th command and his crew.”

“Roger that!”

“First team, come with me and bring only swords. We’re boarding in a few minutes!”

Arthur was still pounding against the door to the bridge. The ship had started to stabilize and was now consistently leaning at a precarious angle. Franz was yelling through the door.

“We can help! Just get us in there, we’re from the rifts and we know what we’re doing!” 

“Franz, that’s not how you negotiate this sort of thing-”

The captain walked towards the door and started shouting back. “The ship has stopped taking in water and we’re stable now. Don’t know why, but it definitely wasn’t because of you two!”

The shadow of the pirate ship was now big enough to block out the windows and everyone could see the pirates whooping and waving flags on board.

“Sir, you do not fully understand the situation here! We are under attack, and I am a military commander! I’m the only one who can help us out-maneuver that ship.”

“Arthur. There’s something coming down the hall!”

Arthur whipped around and his eyes widened. There were no fewer than 10 pirates brandishing swords and charging towards the bridge door. A woman leading them? Burning brown eyes and a dagger in her mouth! The two men leaned even harder into the door, slamming their bruised fists into the metal.

She took the dagger out of her mouth and then took a picture of the bewildered couple. “And what do you think you’re doing?” Ching Shih said.

“We’re...oh God.” This was really it, the pirates were here already, swords and all. Arthur turned to his husband, who was resting his forehead against the door and shaking.

“What do you want with this ship?” Franz hissed.

“All we need is the cargo on board. You two civilians can go to the stern, another ship will show up, and you will be back in Mexico with all of your luggage. Let us into the bridge. You should know, Ching Shih and her men have a reputation for being fair on the high seas.”

“Civilian?....” Arthur said. “Do you have ANY idea who you’re talking to?” He charged towards Ching Shih, fists raised and pride rattled when....

....he took out a guy standing next to the window. The pirate captain had brushed beside him on a charge of her own, and slammed into the door. It rattled loudly but didn’t budge.

“Watch carefully, men! This is why I’m captain and you’re not!” Ching Shih drew her fist and punched the lock as Franz ducked, covered in sweat and adrenaline. Her hand went clean through the door like it was a ghost. 

“What the bloody hell is that?” Arthur blurted out. The pirate he had tackled pushed him aside and stood up to watch in wonder. She twisted her arm inside the door and pulled it out with the remains of the locking mechanism in her hands. Franz could see the captain scrambling for a phone through the hole in the door. Ching Shih gently kicked the door and it swung open.

“I’m getting too old for busting things the old way...” she muttered, rubbing her wrist. “Those men!” she pointed a sword at the captain and sailors curled up under their control panel. “Take them to the stern!” 

The pirates behind her walked in and dragged the captain out as he kicked and screamed about the police. A pair of soggy teenagers in robes waved at him as they passed by in the halls. 

“Oh hey, look! They’re both there!” Franz and Arthur looked at each other before staring at the hooded figures.

“Don’t go down belowdecks, it smells terrible!” the figure threw up her hands and started laughing.

Everyone else stood in awkward silence for a few moments.

“Captain! We’ve already stabilized the ship, so the next priority should be pumping the water out of the hull.” 

Ching Shih stared at them before gesturing to have them come into the control room.

(Can you speak Cantonese?)

No response. Well, she was pretty close to North America. What did people speak there?

(How about Mandarin?)

One figure started nodding vigorously and splashed a little seawater on the walls. 

(OK then, come and explain to me what all these labels say.)

The pair walked into the room and took their positions at the panels. 

“One last thing, lovebirds. You two will be staying on this ship. Trust us, we’re magicians!”

The door swung closed as Franz and Arthur picked their jaws off the floor.

“What...how could she do that? What’s going on with this ship?”

They were back in their room, recovering from the shock of everything. It was strange to be back where they started a few hours ago. Franz held Arthur by the arms and started rocking back and forth. 

“Why us? Why can’t we just have something be calm for once...”

Arthur took hold of Franz’s tie and pulled him in for a kiss. 

“It’ll be OK. I could make it through so many wars. And you could keep writing and working through everything...everything, Franz! We made it through those first years here. There’s nothing that we can’t handle.” 

Of course, both of them knew that nobody could guarantee it. But at that moment, it was enough that they made it through the day. Franz couldn’t stand it anymore and started running his hands down Arthur’s waist. He shivered at his touch and began pulling Franz’s jacket off.

Next thing they knew, Arthur was pressed up against the wall and he just wanted Franz to go faster.

_______________

“Wake up. It’s dawn already.” 

Ching Shih shook one of the hooded figures and wiped the sand on her pants. They were not getting up anytime soon and sleeping like that on the panels could not have been comfortable.

“I can’t wake them up.” 

Rosalind laughed on the other side of the phone. “I’ve got the same issue here. Oh well, I’ll just tell Ada what you told me. You’ve secured everything and you have some special guests. Talk to you later!”

Something went right for once. She stood up and stretched before walking out of the bridge. Her battleship was busy and Spartan with its amenities. But this cruise liner? She watched the sun rise and paint the deck orange. Maybe she could have a little vacation while they were waiting for the ships to make it to Shanghai.

A few hours later, one hooded figure woke up. They took off their hood and rearranged their tangled hair. 

“Hey, Jen. You up?”

Jen was slowly sliding off the controls and mumbled something about her blog.  
“Uh...OK then.” the figure stood up and left the bridge. Where was the captain? Either way, they should check up on the sync chambers to make sure nothing got damaged. What an evening, meeting the pirate queen, magicing the ship to safety , and they didn't have to spend 3 months sailing across the Pacific to secure the delivery! Things were looking up!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The sex scene is only 1 sentence long but I still feel like I need to set my laptop on fire


	7. Two of Hearts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ......slime man.......giant man........

10:03am. Jen returned to the cabins, a breakfast sandwich in one hand. “Order of business: check up on the equipment, then call for Welly and Franz for exercises, then we have like an hour of that one game–what’s it called–shuffleboarding. We should be done around noon.”

“Can we get our robes through the laundry first?” Jo was wringing the rough brown (well, right now it was really brown from the mud) fabric, grimacing at the funky smell. “We have spare robes right?”

“…did you bring spare robes?” Jen bit into the sandwich. It was a bit soggy. 

“Nope. You?”

“Nah.”

10:42am. One luggage raid later, the hooded figures appeared in blue and green hoodies (of course) and cargo pants, stolen from the crew’s cabins. 

They spotted Ching Shih sipping on a piña colada, unaware of the previous night’s events on the railing she leaned on. “Oh, you two!” She pushed herself up to her full height. “Almost didn’t recognise you. Um...”   
What do kids like again?

“Wanna take a selfie with me?” she said.

One does not simply pass up an opportunity to take a selfie with Ching Shih. 

—–  
Ada checked her phone again. It was Ching Shih with two people in hoodies with a brooch each. One was clearly wearing a Pepe mask, while the other holds a peace sign over the face. Ching Shih holds the phone with both hands. 

She replied, “Glad you’re having fun.”

Meanwhile, Ada somehow had to find a way to mask the smell of burnt omelettes before Ros got back from the store.   
—–

10:50am. The other tourists had been safely evacuated from the cruise ship and sent back to Mexico. Deck’s empty save for the pirate crew that mingled about, with work already done for the most part. In the corner is a table filled with pirates playing card games. 

“Oi! You two there in the hoods!” One pirate called out over her cards. “Wanna play whist?”

They went to talk off to the side. “Do we have time?”

“…yeah, why not?”

“Do we know how to play?”

“Psst…We have magic though.”

11:35am, fifty pesos, sixteen dollars, twenty-seven euros, and four hundred clams poorer, the two figures learned that one does not simply cheat at whist. 

And simple magic isn’t gonna fix this next problem. 

The equipment was…a mess. LCL fluid splashed the walls, and the entire room smelled like a mix of blood and chicken soup. One of the attendants, a Norwegian, was canoeing through the LCL with the remains of the synchronisation tubes. Smoke wafted from various corners. A jungle of wires hung from the high ceilings. 

And that’s just the equipment, too. Magic tends to leave fallout if there’s too much of it used in one spot; because they used sea and mud magic, well…they had a veritable LCL aquarium filled with grotesque mud creatures and sentient seaweed. Those things crawled toward them presently. 

“My son, my sweet precious boy…” Jo edged towards the dripping, growling mass. It snapped (as fast as goop things could snap whatever jaws it didn’t have, at least). They edged backwards. 

Jen said, “Don’t just call everything ‘your son’.” 

“So what do we do with it?”

“No worries, we’ve got magic.”

“We can’t use that. It’s born from magic, it’s made of magic.”

“Aaand it’s gonna eat the magic?”

“Yeah.”

“We gotta beat it by hand?”

“Yup.”

“Well, how am I gonna be an optimist about this?”

2:46pm. Their ill-gotten hoodies were also drenched in mud, LCL, sweat, and tears. 

“At least we didn’t bet our brooches.”

“Engh.”

They both paced the hallways, trying to remember if they left Arthur and Franz in the brig. They’re starting to think that they might be a little behind the day’s schedule. 

At last, the right door. “I’m gonna check. Wait here.” Jen twisted the knob and pushed on the heavy door. It only budged a little. She tried again, putting more weight on her shoulder. The door swung wide open. 

“Yo boys, we’re doing more exercises–” She took one quick glance at the room and darted back out. 

Jo looked up from their nails. “What–”

“We should probably let them sleep a little longer.”

“But the synch exercise–”

“Oh-ho, they’re synchronised alright.”

“Oh. Oh!” Both tiptoed away and upstairs onto the poopdeck.

“Is there lunch?”

They missed it by a few minutes. The crew had just finished eating the fancy dinner stuff from last night, the previous chefs are en route to Mexico, and the only food available at the moment was the leftover pirate gruel and grog. Aaand it’s too early for grog. 

“This is the perfect time to fish for our food.”

3:14pm. A simple fishing rod cannot, in fact, carry the weight of an entire shark. But a shark can, in fact, carry the weight of a simple fishing rod. Or three. 

“But why didn’t we just use magic to catch that one?”

“Because, first of all, sharks are an endangered species, and second, why didn’t we think of that earlier?”

From the corner of their eyesight, they saw a green and brown oozing mass edge closer by a centimetre. 

“I’m calling it Mudkip.” 

“OH my god that’s not even close to what a Mudkip looks like!”

A different voice interrupted. “You two again!” Ching Shih stepped on deck with a whole pie. Authentic pie.   
“You hungry?”

“Aye,” responded one. 

“Sí,” said the other. 

Finally something good happened. They scarfed down the pie while watching the “mudkip” (which isn’t a Mudkip) slosh and gloop. Whenever the boat made a turn or tilt, the gloop jiggled and tilted with it. 

Some of the pirate crew began throwing butter knives at it, increasingly fascinated by their disappearances within the sticky mass. 

5:25pm. The crew danced in a circle around the thing. They carried torches and pans and big spoons for making noise. It–whatever it was–seemed to be enjoying itself, bobbing with the slow, rhythmic beats as best as it could. POOM-pum-pum POOM-pum-pum 

Arthur, finally noticing the noise above them, poked Franz lightly in the rib. Franz jumped up. 

“Dear, what’s happening?” Franz asked. After last night’s (and a bit of the morning’s) events, Franz was dazed and confused. Not to mention, that was the deepest sleep they’ve both had in a while. 

“I’ll go check.” Arthur rolled off the bed and stretched, reaching for a decent robe to throw around his shoulders. “Do you want to join me?”

“Mmmmhhh,” Franz made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat. He reached up and planted a quick peck on the spot between Arthur’s neck and shoulder. It was bruised and sensitive. 

5:30pm. The cruise ship was nearing its destination. Someone hung colorful flags all over the railings and lines. The crew danced around the thing, this time with snappy, energetic movements. They clapped and stomped their feet to the new beat. PARRAPAPAT PARRAPAPAT PARRAPA PARRAPA PARRAPAPAT

“What is this?” Arthur was baffled by the sight. 

“Why, what’s–” Franz stopped behind Arthur. His eyes drank in the sight for a good minute, taking in all the detail. 

“Dance with us, nerds!” The two hooded figures (who were now wearing the freshly-laundered old hoods) called out to them. 

“Um,” Franz said. “I’m gonna go get my typewriter real quick.”

“Actually…” Arthur said. “It got a little damaged from yesterday.”

So dancing it is.

“I’m don’t know about this.” Franz warily eyed the holsters hanging off of a nearby pirate. “Hello?”

The pirate and his bongo team waved halfheartedly. 

Arthur rolled his eyes and sighed. “Oh come on, just because those two have cut loose doesn’t mean we’re not friendly.” Maybe it was the presence of a military man that made these ruffians nervous.

Ching Shih coughed a little behind the pair. 

“Tim, go put those canisters back in storage. What is that?” she pointed at the blob and the festivities surrounding it. “I hope it’s not poisonous.”

“IT’S MUDKIP!” Jen shouted. “It’s cool!”

“What’s not cool is your promise!”

“?????” The music slowly died down and the crew stood around wondering what was about to go down between the freaks and their captain.

“Didn’t you promise me that the cargo was still functional? Come on, it’ll only take a little while to check. Then you can keep dancing with that pile of shit.” Mudkip shuddered a little and slithered between a nearby pirate’s ankles.

“Ah, right. The actual assignment. Mudkip, she didn’t mean it! C’mere.” Jo crouched in the middle of the circle for a full minute before giving up and following Ching Shih belowdecks. 

“And you two should come with us too. Same protocol as your daily chamber session.” 

Arthur rubbed his shoulders and groaned. He hadn’t eaten anything all day and was not in the mood for the chambers. It was a strange sort of exhaustion that you had after coming out, especially on the days when they saw bad memories. Franz seemed to be taking the memories of Waterloo fine, but who knew with that man?

The metal gangway was still covered in slime and mud, and the scent of the sea mixed with LCL nearly killed everyone. 

“Oh god! What happened in here? There is a STINK, and...everything else.” Franz turned towards the hooded figures. “Is this what you meant by telling us to not come down?”

“Whatever, just get in the chambers. Captain! This here is a brand new, fully functional synchronization chamber! It’s that tall, and weighs around 1000 pounds so don’t ask the crew to move it.” Ching Shih didn’t know what a pound was but it sounded heavy.

“Here, the couple gets into the seats and then the equipment will close over their hands and legs.”

“Why do you need to do that? They’re not going anywhere.”

“My captain, that’s not the point of a sync chamber! It just cuts down on interference between their minds. The goal of the chambers is to bring the two people together and...” Jen turned towards Jo, who was shaking their head. “They can get along better and we get data.” 

Right. Ada and Ros wanted the chambers for research. Ching Shih was a sailor and not a scientist, but she walked up to the metal casing and ran her hands over the bolts. A red leaf was embossed on one panel. “PROPERTY OF NERV”. They must have spelled nerve wrong.

Inside the chamber, Franz could only faintly hear the figures chattering about the chambers. Periodically, they would smack the walls for emphasis and rattle the equipment inside. He had never heard anything loose inside the chambers before. 

Franz turned around and saw Arthur gazing into the distance. The streams of bubbles from his hand restraints were weak and fizzled out before they could get caught in his hair.

“Are you feeling alright? I’m sorry for being so rough with you last night.”

“I’m fine. Now that you mention it, my bruises are feeling a lot better in the...the uh...”  
“LCL?”

“The LCL. It fee...” Arthur couldn’t finish his sentence. What was happening now? It was like a huge down blanket covering his entirety, and everything was burning but pleasantly hot. He could see Franz slowly drifting out of his seat from the corner of his eye. Whatever this was, it felt amazing to have every muscle, no, every joint and fiber of his being pulled like this. What...sync ratio is...

“That’s the buzzer for when the session’s over. Really cap, we should try to learn how to read Mandarin together. It’s not like we have anything better to do on this voyage.” Jen motioned towards the top of the chamber as its panels unfolded. “We have to use decompression tubes to suck all of the LCL from their lungs before draining the chamber. Otherwise they’ll drown the moment they leave.” Ching Shih nodded thoughtfully without really listening, instead focusing on the rising columns of orange liquid coming through a pair of pipes. The valves made a loud grinding noise before failing entirely.

“Is that supposed to happen?”

“No...why is there so much LCL? I don’t know what lung capacity is, but it’s sure as hell not the entire tube capacity. Jo, go check on the iPads.”

“Yep, it’s completely backed up. Oh god.”

Ching Shih and Jen stared at each other for a moment.

“They hit 200% sync in half an hour. They jumped from a max of 60% to 200%. Open the doors! Did they fuck in there or something?”

Jo hurriedly punched numbers into their iPad as a bemused and mildly concerned Ching Shih paced up and down the gangway. A waterfall of LCL poured from the chamber as the doors slid open. A soggy mass of cloth and shoes flowed out, and she gingerly dragged it out of the LCL with her boot toe. 

“Uh...where’s Arthur? Sir! Franz!” The hand and arm restraints were still locked in place, and there was no sign of the two men. The hooded figures scrambled between iPads and the chamber, checking data and charts upon charts. The thin green line indicating heart rate was still rising and falling.

“Don’t worry! This is...just an unusual circumstance, you see. We can find them again! The heart rate says they’re alive.” This was unideal circumstances. She had squeezed some LCL out of the clothes before hanging them on the railing. Ching Shih wondered if this could come in handy as an execution method. Discipline had been dropping lately after the new hires in Brazil. 

What was that? The metal underneath her was rattling faintly, and there were new ripples in the LCL. Steady, rhythmic ripples.

The rattling grew until a large pillar of LCL began to form in the corner of the room. It twisted and wriggled until it seemed to solidify and melt away from something in the center.

“That’s right, they would have gotten discharged into the general LCL pool! One of them is reforming, so let’s just wait. Can people from the 1800s swim?” the other hooded figure shrugged. 

A man slowly emerged from the LCL, limp like a marionette and gently swaying in the waist-deep liquid. He had black hair like Franz and yet...that wasn’t him.

“GIANT MAN!” shouted the hooded figures in unison. “HI FRANZ!” The man looked up and grinned uneasily. 

“That’s not Franz! How deep is this stuff? He’s got to be at least 8 feet tall, then.” Ching Shih kicked the railing. “What are you?”

He reached up to feel his face before running his hands all over his body. Then a second pair of arms attached to his waist poked themselves out of the LCL. 

“Arthur! Wake up, something’s wrong!”

“Hmm?”

His other, blue pair of eyes opened and darted wildly around the room. They both opened their mouth and screamed. Arthur could feel Franz, and he could feel himself, but when he looked down he saw only a dull green uniform and another pair of arms that were grabbing at his-their buttons? 

“Fusion between humans.” Jen was breathless. So the rifted people could do something special. She tried to recall her studies of Gem anatomy...they were made of light and that’s how they fused. Were Franz and Arthur really solid, then? She glanced at Ching Shih, who was backing away from the giant.

“I’m sorry kids, but I’m getting my crew ready for combat. Do NOT let that get onto the gangway!” she dashed out of the room and slammed the doors shut.

“Get closer so we can see what’s happening. You two really fused?”

“Help me, where did I g-Is that what this is called? Where did Franz go?” he yelped and blushed a little before sinking deeper into the LCL. “Stop, this isn’t funny!”

“Oh boy, they can’t even get their thoughts together.” Jo said. “Let’s start with an easier question. What’s your name?”

He paused for a second. They hadn’t even begun think about that. How could he, at a time like this? He held his breath and started swimming towards the gangway. Everything was dizzyingly short and he reached the railings with ease. 

“Fusion is something we’ve seen before, but not in humans. Either way, you’re not two separate people. What would you like to be called when you’re like this?”

“G...George.” it was the first thing that came to mind. It was a man’s name clearly burned into both of their minds. “What’s wrong with me? Can I get Franz and Arthur back?” George clambered onto the metal gangway, shaking the platform with his weight and clutching it for dear life like a cat trying to escape a bathtub.

“No, nonono no! Don’t start crying. You still have each other in there. Can you hear the other person’s thoughts?” The hooded figures gave him a few moments of recollection. His eyes narrowed and he smiled. 

“You’re here! We’re all here...” George looked down at his hands. A burden had been lifted off his shoulders somehow, and he felt ready to take on the whole world. He was great! He could do anything! Franz had the suspicion that they both knew this but it took fusion to put it into words. 

“Can I go above deck now?” Jo shrugged and that was all George needed to run through the doors and up the stairs. 

Meanwhile, everyone above them was standing on barrels and crates in the storage hall and ready to fire. The lights started to flicker as the banging noises grew louder. 

“He’s almost here. Everyone, know your exits.” Ching Shih loaded a magazine into her assault rifle. “Panic, and I’ll have you thrown overboard.”

She whipped around. The door handle was rattling. 

"Aim at the legs. We need to take both of them alive."

"There's two giants?!" 

"You'll see what I mean!"

The door opened. George hesitantly poked his head out and immediately retreated from the gleaming rows of gun barrels. He could hear the hooded figures running down the hall. They swooshed past his crumpled frame and burst out the door.

“Well then...would you all like to put down the guns? Fusions aren’t dangerous.”   
“Usually.” 

Ching Shih raised an eyebrow and lowered her gun. Slightly. She walked past the hooded figures and gazed down at George. 

"I can't get out with everyone blocking the doorway. I'm too big." He opened and clenched all of his fists. 

"Uh...Franz? Mr. Kafka?" Ching Shih said. George's bottom pair of eyes looked up.   
"Yes?"

She sighed in relief and motioned to her crew. The room was full of clattering and thuds as the pirates put down their rifles and made their way out of the dark hall. She turned towards the hooded figures, who were both grinning uncontrollably. 

"So...what do we do about them?"

"Him. I don't know, I'm thinking we can just let him roam around for an evening, see how they get along." Jen said. "Maybe they'll unfuse."

George took this as an invitation to squeeze between everyone and make his way outside. 

It was summer, so the sun had only just begun to set. The waves glittered with golden light and the sky was turning orange. 

"Everything looks different from this height," he said to himself. He couldn't shake off the feeling of being watched. Watched by who? His husband. 

George took a few steps and gradually broke into a sprint. There was a spring in his gait, and he started laughing. The deck rattled every time his feet hit the wood. He either weighed a ton or was incredibly strong but he didn’t care about that.

“So this is what you feel like. And it’s how you think! Just how do you do it, carrying yourself with all of the air in the world and watching everyone. But at the same time, I can’t see the way I used to see. I’m still wonderful, nonetheless.” he ran his fingers through his fluffy hair. “And you should never forget it!”

Initially it appeared that the most difficult part of being fused would be walking, but it had come to him rather naturally. Now, how would George deal with his arms, he wondered. Having an extra set coming out of his waist meant that resting his hands in his pockets were out of the question, and he couldn’t leave his arms hanging without hitting the other arms. George wandered through scattered umbrellas waving his arms about idly. 

“Alright, so I’ve got the bottom pair and you have the normal arms, right?”  
Arthur made George nod. The lower pair of arms reached up, running their fingers along his coat buttons before tugging at the upper arm’s gloves.   
“What? What do you want?” He stumbled a little and then leaned on the railing.   
The hands locked fingers and then Franz squeezed. George blushed a little, immediately regained his composure, and then lost it again. 

“Really? This is how we’re going to deal with my hands?”

“I’m just glad we have this option.”

By now a small crowd of pirates was hovering around George, taking care not to stray too far from their posts but all staring slack-jawed at the tall silhouette giggling to himself in two voices.

“Jesus Christ, how am I going to explain this to them?” Ching Shih rubbed her temples and texted a picture to Ada.

A few minutes later, her phone started buzzing.

“You didn’t edit that photo, did you?! His Grace really fused with Kafka?”

“Yeah, whatever they did, they did it. Are they going to be dangerous or violent at all?”  
“Umm....what do they....he look like?”

Ching Shih squinted in the brilliant sunset. “Eight feet tall, four arms and eyes. He’s holding his own hands right now.”

“OK. That would suggest that this works the same way as the fusion we see in Gems. There’s nothing to worry about besides them being not able to fuse again once unfused. Ros and I certainly have a lot to work on now...oh boy.”

Ada leaned back in her swivel chair and yelled into the other room. 

“Call Josephine! They fused!”

Rosalind popped out of the doorway with a huge smile on her face. 

“It’s true! They’re really composed of particle-wave matter! Yes, this isn’t exactly experimental proof, but we’ll have our ideal subjects. We’ll have to meet up in Shanghai, won’t we?”

“Actually, I’ve been thinking that we could do all of our research on the ship. There’s no way the synch chambers can be operated without the LCL bay, and there’s probably room for a lab on board.” Ada turned back to her computer screen. 

“There is also an army on board. We won’t go down without a fight.” Rosalind nodded grimly and walked back out of the room. Josephine would have to come with them and they would have to find a way to stay in touch in between San Francisco and London. Should she bring Napoleon? He could serve as a control, if he decides to cooperate. 

Fancy that, Napoleon Bonaparte, commanding a ship full of pirates. Rosalind sat down in the kitchen and sipped some tea. She looked at her hands for several minutes. So they could all phase and fuse with each other, apparently.

What kind of human was she?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why did I even tag this as Steven Universe this is literally just two human(?) dudes fusing. They aren't rocks


	8. Get in the Chopper!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Deliberations in San Francisco are cut short and the Bonapartes leap into action!

“Rosalind, you know I already had this planned for a while! OK, so a while is literally two days, but I’m not dropping everything right away."

"Yes, but you should probably see the photos at least and-"

"Just text them to me. I'll have my phone all day." Josephine hung up and pulled over in an empty lot next to the Pirch building. The already haphazard state of parking in the city was made worse by the sharp drop between sidewalk and moat. A small crowd was making its way towards the entrance. A few seagulls swooped down to splash in the water and fled from the approaching feet. 

All of the furniture was in its proper aisle, but Josephine noticed that a few decorations had been moved around. The writing on the wall had been changed via printed tarps that were duct-taped over the previous blurbs. Who does that in a bathroom? No, focus. This store is bigger on the inside, and there HAS to be some sort of clue. Perhaps they're using the writing as a distraction. 

The building was still chilly despite being full of people, and the air smelled faintly of steel sinks. Josephine knew it was blood, but there wasn't a difference if you thought about it. Everyone quieted down a bit when a young woman strolled into the center of the showroom. She was stunningly beautiful and nothing about her face was particularly captivating. Her dark hair fell in loose waves around her face and she was wearing a tight yellow dress. 

"Welcome to Pirch. I will be your guide through your joyful household! Call me the Aesthetician." Josephine tiptoed over someone's shoulders. So there were other employees. 

By now everyone had scattered into the various showrooms and was trying to follow the Aesthetician as she presented the furniture to everyone. 

"This chair is crafted from the hearts and passion of woodworkers from Spain. You can practically feel its soul in the color scheme. Green, white and blue would be ideal, don't you see?" 

The Aesthetician turned towards a tarp-covered wall and laughed. "What a joyous home!" She wanted to tell everyone how amazing this writing was, but that wasn't in the guidebook. So she just balled up the tarp in her hands. 

"This microwave is so...attractive. Really, I don't know how else to say it!" a customer said. Everyone near him laughed, but it was hollow. 

Josephine narrowed her eyes. They didn't have data on this Aesthetician. What did she know about the Franz inside? The Aesthetician brushed her bangs away from her face and Josephine glimpsed rows of thin, neat scars. Now this was really weird, and she needed to leave. She walked up to a sink and gently pressed Ada's signaling device behind it. Nobody was moving that any time soon. Josephine walked out of Pirch with the Aesthetician in the corner of her eye. She was gazing lovingly at the poems on the walls. 

Rosalind and Ada were packed and ready to go within an hour. Josephine, however, was an entirely different matter. 

“My place in the operation is here,” she remained adamant, eyes hard and gleaming and resolute like diamonds. That air of aristocracy, useful in her previous life, appeared once again on her features. “We need eyes on Pirch.”

“Just come with us,” Ada pleaded. “Your position has been compromised by that last mission anyway. The people from Pirch might find you–”

“Might.” Josephine interrupted. 

“–Soon.” Ada continued without missing a beat.

Rosalind spoke up. “Look, Josephine. We’re not asking you to move permanently across the globe, alright? It’s just a cruise. All we need to do is finish the research over there, that’s it. And,” she raised her hand before Josephine could interrupt again, “the reason we want you with us is because Ada is right–your position **has** been compromised. We don’t know what those Pirch people are capable of, and we don’t want to wait until you’ve been cloned and enslaved to find out.”

Josephine thought about it for a second. “What about my husband? Who will care for him while we’re gone?”

Ada sank into one of Josephine’s plush flower-printed sofas and rested her head on an armrest. “Pfft, he’s a grown man and a former emperor besides. He can take care of himself.”

Josephine only shook her head. “He really cannot.” The three women looked into the kitchen to find Napoleon sitting on a high stool, legs swinging, bent over a bowl of…something. On the stove near him was a small pot bubbling with black goop. Strange popping noises and bright flashes were coming from the microwave a few more feet away. Napoleon stirred the bowl contents so wildly that some bits spattered onto the floor and on his shirt. Josephine called out to him, “There’s no need to be so rough, dear.”

Napoleon only scoffed under his breath, saying, “You know you like it rough.”

Rosalind grimaced. “Why?”

Josephine gave a look to the other two. “He can’t even microwave our takeout.”

Napoleon hopped off the stool at that remark, indignant. “Hey! If there’s anything I can do around this house, it’s use a microwave!”

Ada, feeling nauseous, leaned on the countertop. “Yeah? What’re you heating up there? Fire?” The microwave burst into flames, blasting the back open and shattering the glass window front. The explosion left new black marks on the kitchen wall. Josephine left to grab a fire extinguisher while Napoleon doused the fire with the stuff from his bowl. For the record, at least it didn’t smell poisonous. Even so, Ada pulled Rosalind to the living room, both of them feeling vaguely sick.

——————-

Arthur and Franz were–er, **George was**–still fused together, leaning on the railings like a one-man reenactment of a Titanic scene: George’s lower set of arms wrapped around his waist while the upper set held out to the sides. He was whispering to himself and giggling. The sun had long set, the pirate crew were telling stories around a makeshift fire, Mudkip was resting in a special barrel cut vertically to accommodate him, the hooded figures were looking through memes to pass the time (occasionally nudging the Mudkip-barrel with a toe), and Ching Shih trained her eyes on the stars. It seemed to her like there were less of them than she remembered.

—————-

Josephine and Napoleon ended up driving the two women back to their flat. 

After some time circling the blocks later, Rosalind was just about recovered enough to speak.

“You know, if you’re so worried about him, why don’t you just bring him along?” Rosalind said. She leaned on Ada’s shoulder. 

Napoleon, now in cleaner clothing and in the front seat, shook his head at that suggestion. “No, oh nonon no.”

“Why not?” Ada whined sleepily.

“Why not.” Napoleon looked out the car window, muttering in a flat and even tone. “Why **shouldn’t** I drop everything **right now** and just hop in the **most hated method of transportation** where the man I would least like to see right now is **in his honeymoon phase**?” Then he lapsed into a string of Fritalanish (French, Italian, and English) that none of the three women would have wanted to translate anyway.

“He has a point,” Josephine said. “I think.”

“What about you, though?” Rosalind asked. “You’re the best woman for the jobs that Ada here and I can’t do.”

“You’ll be fine. Ching Shih’s with you.” Josephine replied. “And my husband needs me more than you need me.”

“But Pirch–” Ada started. 

“Someone needs to keep an eye on them.” Josephine unlocked the doors. 

Ada and Rosalind huddled up, exchanged a few whispers, and finally agreed to let the issue go. “Fine,” Rosalind sighed. “You have until 10:30 tomorrow night to decide. That’s our departure time.” They gathered their things and were about to leave when Rosalind turned around in a last attempt to convince Josephine. “You know what we are. You’re rifted too.” She looked directly into her eyes. “You and your husband deserve to know.”

Josephine wavered, shrugged, and forced a heavy smile. “Text me if you need anything.”

Ada was the first to step away from the car, leading a dizzier Rosalind to the front door. 

———————-

That night, after they cleaned up the leftovers of pizza and soda–strange yet beloved things to the Bonapartes–the two sat down in front of the TV set again.

Josephine was the one to break the silence. “Darling, do you think…”

“Hm?” Napoleon was distracted by Pawn Stars.

“Maybe we **should** join them after all?” She pulled her eyes away from the screen, looking for a reaction from him.

Napoleon only made a noncommittal sound. “It isn’t really our business.”

“Isn’t it, though?” She said. “You were the one who told His Grace–”

“Just Arthur,” Napoleon corrected.

“–about his fiancee’s clone, weren’t you? We’re already involved.” When he didn’t respond, she pressed on. “You must be a **little** bit interested, at least? About what we really are?”

Napoleon finally paused the program and looked at his wife. “Why all this, all of a sudden? You weren’t saying that in the car.”

Josephine thought for a moment and sighed. “I’m just having second thoughts–I mean, Ros is right, we **are** rifted people too, aren’t we?” 

Napoleon said, “But they aren’t us. We’re fine as we are right now. We have a house. We have this thing,” he waved the remote at the TV, “and we’re safe and far away from war. So what if they’re having their own issues. It’s not ours to worry about.”

“Isn’t it, though?”

“I…” Napoleon thought about what he wanted to say, or what he’d wanted to say for so long. He took her hand and ran a thumb over the ring on her finger. “Whenever I get involved in matters like these, too many things come between us. Back then, it was the distance, it was the war, it was Europe and politics and…well, you know.” He sighed. “I don’t want anything to ever come between us ever again. This time, I just want to be with you.”

Josephine blushed. “My love, you have always been a romantic, did you know that?” She pulled him in for a hug and kissed his brow.

“Well, we **did** live to see the beginnings of the Romantic Era–” Napoleon smiled.

“Don’t ruin the mood!” She buried her face in his chest and laughed.

It wasn’t Napoleon to ruin the mood; rather, it was a poorly-timed knock at their door. 

Napoleon, wearing blue teddy-bear print pajamas, hesitated to answer it. “No self-respecting man should ever be seen in these.”

“Shush, you like it.” Josephine pouted but stood up anyway. “It’s probably just Ada,” she said as she opened the door. But it wasn’t Ada, it was–

“Good evening.” The woman had dark flowing hair that covered the collarbone, and she wore a black business suit.   
Josephine, a little surprised, asked, “Do you need anything?”

“Yes. Would you happen to have the time to talk about the latest in cutting-edge technology microwaves–”

Napoleon peered from the sofa. “Who is it?”

“Ah! And you must be the man of the house?” The woman craned her neck. Josephine’s stomach dropped. There, under her jaw, was a neat little row of scars.

“No solicitations!” Napoleon stood up and waked towards his wife.

“She’s asking if we’re interested in a microwave.” Josephine shot a pointed look at Napoleon. 

“This late at night?”

The woman edged closer; Josephine blocked her.

“You have impeccable timing. As it happens, our last microwave just broke down on us this afternoon.”

“Well, worry no more! Our facilities have the widest and most excellent selection of kitchen appliances. Would you like to take a flier?” The woman asked. “Oh, it seems I left my fliers in the car. Right this way,” she stepped back and gestured to a nondescript little car parked some ways away from the house.

“Just one moment,” Josephine said. “Darling, can you fetch me a sweater? It’s a bit chilly, isn’t it?” Napoleon left her side hesitantly and went upstairs. The woman turned her back. Josephine sprang into action. She knocked the woman down with a swift hit to the head. It wasn’t enough. The woman was still conscious enough to kick her in the shin with a pointed heel. Josephine moved just barely fast enough to avoid it, but she fell off-balance. The woman grabbed her by the neck and began choking her. Josephine pulled the woman’s hair, and some of it came off in clumps in her hands. Josephine headbutted her with as much strength as she could muster. Stars spun around her head. It took her a while to realize that the woman was now on the ground next to her, unconscious. 

“HA! Straight outta Martinique, that’s right!” Josephine yelled, nearly breathless. No one wins in a headbutt.

At that moment, Napoleon appeared at the door, sweater in hand and a mask of confusion and terror on his face. “Che cavolo!? I was gone for two minutes!”

Josephine stepped over the body and darted about the house, picking up her cellphone and other necessary items. “No time to explain, but we need to leave. Right now.”

Napoleon’s expression could only be described as “?”. 

Meanwhile, Josephine was halfway out the backdoor already. “Look, I love you, and I don’t want to leave either, but we have no choice.”

“What,” Napoleon blinked. “I was gone for two minutes!” He looked at the body near the door again. “Did you do that?”

“Yes. Also, we’re joining the others. Grab your things.”

Hearing this finally made him sober up. “What. Wait. Didn’t we **just** talk about this? Less than five minutes ago? On that sofa?” He pointed to the living room, Pawn Stars still frozen on the TV. 

“Our position has been compromised.” Just then, two slick black vans appeared on the front.

“I wasn’t briefed on this!”

“I’ll explain when we reach the helicopter.”

“The helicopter?”

“Yes.”

“…What’s a helicopter again?”

“…I’m not entirely sure.” 

They slipped through the back door with the lights in the house still on. “I’m driving there,” Napoleon said.

“But you can’t drive without a license.”

“Pah! You’re looking at the man who nearly united an entire continent!” Napoleon hopped into the driver’s seat.

“Nearly. And that has nothing to do with driving.” Josephine rode shotgun.

“What’s the worst that can happen?”

—————-

“Three things.” Rosalind crossed her arms. “One, you crashed your car into the hotel’s mailbox.”

Napoleon nodded.

“Two, you left the lights on in your house. That’s going to cost a fortune in electricity bills.”

He nodded again.

“Three. You’re only in pajamas.” 

Napoleon’s shoulders slumped. 

“Teddy bear pajamas.”

“I can explain.”

“I’m just glad you finally changed your mind.” Ada said to Josephine.

She replied, “For the record, I didn’t. We were chased here.”

There was a knock on the door; this time it was heavy, urgent, and clearly impatient. “Open up!”

“Your terrible driving brought them here!” 

“You’re never driving anything again!” 

“Quick! To the helipad!” Rosalind shooed the others up the staircase that led to the roof.

“Who’s gonna fly this thing? Where are the pilots?” Napoleon shouted.

“You’re looking at them!” Ada replied, pointing at Rosalind and herself. Rosalind was slipping on some of the steps and Ada had to support her too.

They burst through the rooftop doors. Looking down at the street, they were surprised that there weren’t as many people chasing them. That’s odd.

In front of them was the helicopter, a huge and towering hunk of metal. They jumped in, strapped on the headgears, buckled up. 

“So that’s what a helicopter is,” Napoleon said.

The people chasing them kicked the rooftop door open. “Stay right there!”

Ada flipped them off and flipped the switches to life. As the helicopter lifted off, she could see the people being blown back. The noise was deafening and glorious.

“Are you sure you two should be flying this thing?” Josephine shouted above the noise. 

“We don’t have a choice!” Rosalind yelled back.

“Relax!” Ada joined in. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

“Anybody else have a feeling of déjà vu?” Napoleon yelled.

—————–

The Aesthetician woke up in a room. The ceiling was plain stucco white. A letter was pinned to the bedstand.

Your mission was a success. We’ve smoked them out. Let’s see what they’ll do from here.

She stood up and faced a mirror, feeling new bandages on her face. Carefully, she unrolled them until she could see half of her face. A bruise blossomed on her cheek, right where it hit the pavement. Deep scratches overlapped. It all felt tender and broken. She poked at the skin, feeling the nerves’ sharp responses. An attendant found her, hours later, smearing blood on her cheekbones.  
—————–

The hooded figures were looking half-dead in a heap in the corner, bandaged up and drinking from their eighth juice box each. George had an indecipherable look on his face, one set of hands clasped to the chest and the other set firmly on the hips. A few pirates were knocked out cold. Metal debris bobbed up and down all around them. A hole on the port side was roughly patched with gunk. The air reeked of metal and seaweed and mud. The only happy one on the cruise at that moment was Mudkip, who seemed to be a little fuller. It sang in warbling, bubbly hums.

“I have so many things to say right now.” Ching Shih narrowed her eyes. She was livid.

“I can explain.” Josephine volunteered. All eyes were on her.

“Alright,” Ching Shih sighed and gestured for a lawn chair. One was brought to her and she sat down. “Explain.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Microwaves normally don't have any effect on humans.


	9. Rough Landing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> George meets Napoleon and starts questioning his existence.

“Do you want the scientific explanation or just the lowdown? Because Ros has everything...oh.” Rosalind had walked up to George and was trying to strike up a conversation. 

“Good evening, Your Grace. I’m Dr. Rosalind Franklin. Nice to meet you.” She held out her hand for a full minute while George decided how to greet her. Eventually he just grabbed her arm with all four hands and shook it. Ada couldn’t help but stifle a giggle as she watched Rosalind struggle to stay upright. She turned to Josephine.

“This wasn’t how I expected to meet the Duke, but we certainly won’t be bored on this trip. Oh! Ms. Ching, would you mind if we had some dinner before laying out the plan? It was a rather...stormy flight.” Ada rubbed her sore ears and realized that she couldn’t wear headphones for the next few days. Fabulous.

“Sure, if you can make up for THOSE TWO completely trashing my ship. We’re sailing on a prayer at this point, and I’d like some proper repairs in the next few days. It’s two months until we reach Shanghai.” Ching Shih scowled at the hooded figures in the distance. “GET UP! It’s dinnertime.”

“I can make it two weeks!” Jen said weakly before throwing her juice box at Mudkip. It swallowed the box and Rosalind watched in wonder as it slowly dissolved in the translucent jelly. 

“Is this another magical thing?” Josephine asked. “Anyways, let’s eat and then discuss our options. We certainly have a lot of catching up to do.”

“I need two goats or fifty pounds of fish.” Jen said. Ching Shih decided to just leave it and go eat.  
________________________________

“Can you explain to me how...exactly they ended up together?” Rosalind was pacing in circles around George as he cocked his head and watched her like a confused bird. She looked up at him intensely and furrowed her brows.

“Long story.” Napoleon said from the back. “I think they met in London.”

“That’s not what I meant. Why are Mr. Kafka and the duke fused with each other?”

“I uhhh, I was in the synchronization chambers, and I...I don’t quite remember what happened. Then I formed out of the LCL pool and then the hooded figures asked me to swim towards them.” George coughed. “I really don’t remember everything, maybe you should ask Franz and Arthur.”

“I knew all of that already. Your...parts have been using the chambers for the past week and a half, but that doesn’t explain why you only fused yesterday. Did your components do anything unusual the day before?”

The hooded figures stifled a laugh as George took a deep breath and tried to keep his composure. That certainly wasn’t the first time on the cruise, so that couldn’t be the only explanation.

“They fused the morning after Ching Shih took over the ship. And that’s when we used so much magic that Mudkip happened. Maybe that had something to do with it.”

Could magic do that? Rosalind wasn’t very familiar with how rift magic worked. She preferred rational explanations, conclusions and laws drawn from countless experiments. The mere presence of rifts had sent the physicists and engineers at Oxford into absolute chaos, and Rosalind took pride in the relative composure of the biology departments. There wasn’t any debate that the rifted people were humans that lined up with all previous observations. 

Oh, who was she kidding? This whole investigation was intolerably ridiculous. The Duke of Wellington was acting like a lovestruck schoolgirl and they were using instruments from an anime to conduct research. Her pirate friend could go through walls and maybe they weren’t really solid after all. She couldn’t discount the mud magic as a factor.

“I need to talk to Ada in private. Good night, everyone.” she beckoned for Ada to follow her and left the Napoleonic couples to themselves. George frowned as the door slammed behind them. Ros left a bad taste in his mouth. Josephine saw Napoleon stewing in his own anger and tried to make small talk.

“Well, you’ve certainly changed since the last time I saw you two. Did you have fun on the cruise?” Josephine took George by surprise and he jumped a little at the question.

“Oh, I’m...well...I have never seen you before. Not like this, at least. I liked the cruise, good chance to relax.”

“Was there anything in particular that you liked? I’ve been thinking about a vacation with Napoleon sometime, maybe after this. He doesn’t like ships, though. So a cruise is out of the question.” 

“Arthur.”

“Napoleon, do we have to do this now? Just go to bed, you look like a mess.”

“No.” Something was turning inside Napoleon’s head, and judging from the look in his eyes it wasn’t good. He rose from his seat and walked up to George, nearly pressing himself against his chest.

“I see you’re enjoying your honeymoon. What’s it like to be fused?”

“It’s hard to describe. I can feel both of them inside of me.”

“Would you like to rephrase that?”

“I’m aware of both mens’ presence, I can hear all of their thoughts, but mostly I’m just me. If you call either of them by name they’ll probably take over.” George narrowed his eyes. “What are you trying to get at here, Bonaparte?”

“Nothing, really. I’m just noticing that you’re so happy like this. Arthur, do you understand that man any more now that you can read his mind?”

“Franz is perfectly incomprehensible. I can’t make him come out of his side if I wanted to. But we’re comfortable like this, so I won’t make him.”

Arthur swallowed. He may not understand Franz, and he may not understand Napoleon, but by god there was nothing good in the general’s intentions right now. His husband's voice was gnawing incessantly at the back of his head. Where was he trying to go now?

“We’re on our honeymoon, Napoleon, give it up-he-I-it’s been a long day, and I’m not feeling well right now.” George blurted, much to Arthur’s surprise. “Thank you for asking, though, Napoleon. I’m having a great time.” Napoleon’s eyes flickered. They weren’t as collected as they appeared to be. He supposed that it made sense after all, a military man fused to a dreamy, scatterbrained artist. Arthur must have been an unusually hard time trying to keep Franz under control if George’s veneer was cracking. 

“Alright then, Napoleon. Dear, let’s leave them be for the night and see how they are tomorrow morning. I expect that Ros will be running a battery of experiments on George and it’ll be a long day.” Josephine took Napoleon’s arm and smiled at George before leading her husband out of the room. Jen squirmed in her seat and breathed a sigh of relief. There was so much tension in the room that she thought George would unfuse on the spot. 

Meanwhile, Rosalind and Ada were simmering in their own excitement. Just imagine the possibilities, Ada said with a grin. Even if the uses of fusions weren’t apparent now, they could certainly work something out when they returned to London and presented their research. The first thing that came to Rosalind’s mind was how tiring it must be as a fusion. Not a single moment alone to your thoughts. She simply couldn’t imagine living like that. Her mind was turning, trying to find the rhyme and reason behind this.

“I expect that they can’t stay fused for more than a few days.”

“Why not, Ros? There’s no errant radiation on this ship and as long as they don’t get too damaged during the tests I don’t think they would separate. You heard the kids, they were absolutely lovestruck yesterday! George loved being George.”

“They could be the most loving couple in the world and they would still wear each other out after a while. It’s a very intimate thing, Ada, to be merged like that both mentally and physically. We’re not even sure if George has two minds or one.” she circled a diagram on the napkin in front of her and firmly underlined the word “cognition”. 

“That’s true...it seems like one of those experiences you can’t have described. You just have to see it for yourself.” Ada looked up and held Rosalind’s gaze for a bit before returning to her laptop. “Anyways, we’ll find out tomorrow. It’s so exciting! Nobody else in the world knows what we do right now.”

Ada’s keyboard filled the room with clicking for a few minutes. She wasn’t feeling particularly active and her hands were cramping up from gripping the helicopter controls so tightly. Ada turned towards Rosalind. She was biting her lip as her dark, sparkling eyes moved across the notes she had been taking during their conversation. Ada loved it when she had that look of determination. Tomorrow would be a big day no matter what the results.

“I’m calling it a day. My back is killing me right now.” Rosalind stood up and stretched. “I suppose we’ll just take one of the rooms on the cruise? I don’t know if Ching Shih prepared rooms for us.”

“She probably didn’t. We came on rather short notice, after all.” 

“At least we’ll be able to finally get a good night of sleep.” Rosalind sighed. She saw Ada smiling up at her and couldn’t help but smile a little back. There was something beautiful about how energetic Ada could be.

Napoleon lay awake, sweltering in the tropical heat next to Josephine. She had already gone to sleep while he tossed and turned in his teddy bear pajamas. There was no way that fusion was something only Arthur and Franz could do. It had to be a rift thing. He could barely stand the thought of them stuck together like that. The Duke surrendering himself to a commoner? That wasn’t the Arthur he knew. He supposed that he didn’t exactly have any choice but to settle for someone like that. Arthur would never try to dabble in magic to bring back Kitty. Napoleon’s thoughts began to drift back to Corsica. Sometimes, there was talk about magic around his mother. She had made some compact to guarantee that he would be born alive, they said. Maybe he should have seen this coming, after all. 

George was restlessly shivering on the deck. The moon glowed faintly behind a veil of clouds as the sea rushed past the ship. He jerked suddenly and hit a wall. 

"Franz, come on! Just tell George what's wrong!" Somewhere in the back of Arthur's mind, he could sense that Franz was writhing in discomfort. But he couldn't see clearly enough. George felt like he was being pulled apart. 

"Arthur, just leave me alone."

"Alone? How can I do that when we're like this?" 

"You don't have to show me this much, I...I'm afraid I can't take this! I might never come apart again, I'll be a empty hulk carrying your memories."

George stared blankly at the moon. Would he just vanish if they came apart? Nobody really knew how human fusions worked. They had no cores, they were completely and unbelievably mixed. George felt a tinge of fear for the first time. He didn’t want either of them to leave, did he? But there was the undeniable creeping sensation in his chest, like something was smothering him. He tripped over his own feet and fell against the wall. George started flickering in and out of view as Franz’s silhouette pulled itself out of the fusion. Arthur was thrown to the ground and he laid there for a few moments, rubbing his temples and groaning.

“Arthur! Oh no, are you alright? I didn’t know that unfusing would hurt!” 

“Huh? I’m fine. Why did you just break off all of a sudden? If you wanted to unfuse, you could have told me ahead of time and I could have prepared myself.” 

“I’m sorry. I guess...I was tired. It’s late, the moon is out and everyone else is asleep already. I shouldn’t be out here.”

“Franz. Would you look at that. I’m still wearing the same shirt I put on this morning.”

“That doesn’t have to do with anything right now.”

“No, think about it. You saw how the captain threw our clothes in a pile after she fished them from the LCL. We should be stark naked right now.” 

“It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?”

_________________________________________________________________

Rosalind and Ada were examining the couple like a pair of horses. They tell you not to look them in the mouth, but that doesn’t apply to humans. At this point Ros wasn’t sure if she was looking at humans.

“Correct me if I’m wrong. You unfused, and you were wearing the clothes we recovered from the LCL. Ada, do you have any idea what this means?!”

“Infinite clothing.” Franz said.

Rosalind sighed and glared at him. “No, that’s not it. What it means, is that we can ‘save’ your bodies and clothing somehow. Your resonances...the resonances...they were saved when you fused and then replayed when you broke out of George.” 

What did it mean? She couldn’t quite figure it out. Either way, she would finally get to conduct these experiments. It had been a long summer of waiting, and she had her work cut out for her. So much potential in these new bodies! Rosalind approached her subjects with a strange giddiness that perhaps came off as creepy. Arthur took a deep breath and glared at her.

“I don’t know what you plan on doing with us, Rosie, but I will not have you touch me.”

She tried not to scream. “You misunderstand our research, Your Grace. We only need your measurements, basic vitals, and some tissue samples. And my name is Rosalind, thank you very much.”

“Fair enough. Franz, don’t be so nervous.”

Franz squirmed under her gaze. She was radiating an aura of intimidation and restraint. Ada put down a large cooler and took out a rack of vials. Then she pulled out a pair of syringes wrapped in clear, sterile plastic.

“Let’s get down to buisness, then.”

Arthur glanced at his husband. He was holding his breath and shivering. Neither of them knew why.

 

___________________________________________________________________________

“Where exactly are they, again?” the broad-shouldered, big-handed manager asked. The Aesthetician stood before him, impeccably dressed with a bandage wrapped around her cheeks.

 

“We don’t know, sir. Franklin and Lovelace arrived in San Francisco two days ago and we lost their location after that. They took off in a helicopter.”

“Great.” the manager spun his pencil around his finger and flicked it off his desk. “This is going to be far more complicated than expected. But I wouldn’t go as far as to say that you failed.”

The Aesthetician’s eyes widened.

“Really? But I was the one who let their agent out-”

“No, no. We didn’t anticipate that they would have a helicopter prepared, or that their agent would have fighting capabilities. What this incident does tell us however, is that these researchers are planning ahead, and that it may be in our interest to train you in combat.”

She looked down at her feet. Fighting, huh? It was going to come to blows. Then again, she did feel a bit strange, being so helpless when the Pirch guards were armed to the teeth. But that was what made her special.

“Understood. Thank you, and I hope you’re having a great day!”


	10. Dimensions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone makes new discoveries and finds out that there's more than meets the eye in this magical business....

“Alright, what do we have here?”

“That’s a piece of shit. Look at it, what could we possibly need it for?”

“A really reinforced fishing pole?” 

Jo shook their head and Jen tossed the half-melted pipe aside. Mudkip caught the pipe in its “mouth” and wolfed it down the way owls eat mice. The hooded figures watched in amazement. 

“Where does that even go?” Jen asked. She walked towards Mudkip and gently patted its slime. Not particularly sticky, but warm like freshly cooked boba. Mudkip gurgled happily and pressed against her hand for more petting.

“Come on, where did that pipe go? We might need it. You wanna spit it back out?”

“We don’t need the pipe.”

“It’s USEFUL! Wouldn’t it make a wicked staff?”

Jen turned towards Mudkip, who was watching the hooded figures with something that resembled interest in its slimy face. It changed color a few times before settling on a shimmery blue. 

“OK, that’s it. How does it do that?” Jo asked.

“Change color?”

“No, how does it swallow so much stuff? I mean, it’s pretty obvious that eating has an effect on Mudkip’s color and we don’t know if its color means anything. Where does it all go?”

“Well...a person could fit in there.”

“Jen!”

“And we’ve seen Mudkip spit things out.”

“JEN!”

Too late. She had already stepped into the jelly and Mudkip did the only thing it knew: eat. Mudkip grew in size and wriggled as Jen was sucked into the blob. Jo watched in horror as Jen’s black robes disappeared and Mudkip made a smile. 

The slime was hard to swim through and it smelled like something large and magical died in it. Given Mudkip’s origins, that probably happened. Jen held her breath and swatted at some butter knives that were stuck in the....huh. The slime kept pulsating and changing colors every few seconds, and at times Jen was completely frozen in a stiff gel before suddenly dropping through a translucent slurry riddled with random chunks of debris and food. Hey look, it’s the juice box from earlier. Wait a minute...there were little pieces of paper coming off of the carton. Jen pulled her cloak over her face. Her eyes were burning and she looked around in panic. She was not planning on being digested in the slime dimension today. 

Meanwhile in a different fold of the rifts, Jo was anxiously prodding Mudkip with an amulet. The enchantment had worn off a while ago, but you never knew if it still had a few sparks of magic left. Mudkip growled and flattened itself into a green pancake. 

“What? I’m just trying to help! JEN!”

Jen perked up a little. There was muffled yelling outside. A distant flash of magic lit up the slime and Jen could see the floating silhouettes of everything Mudkip had swallowed. She swam forward, looking for a pocket of air. Jen stopped in front of a mass of slime that seemed to be stretched thinner than the other lumps. She kicked it a few times and yelled as the membrane abruptly broke open and she fell onto a firm, cold surface. 

“Whoa...” it felt like a water bed. A slime bed, if you will. But most importantly, Jen could breathe. She stood up and gawked at the slime chamber, surrounded by walls studded with torn sheets of metal. Well, at least that was taken care of. And she knew where all of Mudkip’s snacks went. They were in the.....slime dimension. Now, how to get out? Jen reached under her cape and felt her utility belt. The knife would probably just anger Mudkip or worse, kill it. She didn’t want to find out what a smoke potion would do to the bubbling goop behind her. Jen didn’t have a lot of options left. She felt her phone in her pocket and it seemed crazy enough to be worth a shot. 

Jo’s phone started buzzing. They were about to hang up when they saw the contact photo. How in the world...

“Jen, what the fuck?”

“There’s Internet in here! Can you believe it? Pet Mudkip for me!”

Jo nodded slowly and patted the slime. It seemed sick but friendly and just wanted to rest for a moment. 

“Soo...you wanna get me out now? I think I’ve got a pretty good idea of what Mudkip is made of now. Oh, ew.”

“I don’t know, Mudkip seems out of it right now. I don’t want to disturb it.”

“Come on, just...give it a kick?”

Jo looked down at the pitiful blob that had retreated into a blue pancake against the wall. They tiptoed behind Mudkip and gave it a gentle kick. Mudkip shrieked and started contracting rapidly before dashing across the floor and stopping in front of a pile of scrap metal. Mudkip shivered and spat out Jen with a disgusting noise. She yelled and crawled across the floor while wiping slime off her face before standing up and punching Jo in the shoulder. The hooded figures cheered and ran around Mudkip, who was burbling in relief and changing colors like a cheap lava lamp. 

Meanwhile in a different fold of the rifts, several gay and unhappy Rifteds were standing around the onboard laboratory. Rosalind had spent the past hour rifting over her equipment and both her and Ada had tightly bandaged hands. 

“Are you sure you’ll be able to do whatever research you want with your hands like that?” Arthur asked. He watched as Ada struggled with the lock on a cabinet and all he could hear was the sound of her nails slipping against the metal. 

“It’ll be fine, Your Grace. Worst comes to worst, I can still type. Hey! Ros! You got everything?”

Rosalind nodded and arranged some shiny, menacing-looking tools on a bench. 

“OK...” she took a deep breath and turned towards Josephine, who was currently occupied with Candy Crush. “Your majesty. The Emperor has already seen the procedures we used on the Duke and Dr. Kafka yesterday. It’s your turn now.”

Josephine set her phone down and smiled at Ros. She wanted to tell her that the formalities wouldn’t be necessary, but as long as Napoleon was in the room it would be better to play it safe. Napoleon stood up and stretched. 

“Alright. Do it quick.”

“It won’t take more than an hour, Your Majesty.” Josephine couldn’t detect any hint of fear in Rosalind’s voice. Amazing. 

The procedures went without incident, despite Napoleon’s insistence on keeping his shirt on and Josephine’s fear of the strange tools that Rosalind was holding. Franz and Arthur were either pacing through the lab or making passive-aggressive comments.

“Comfortable?”

“Shut up, Arturo.”

“Try not to move so much.” Rosalind said while shooting a nasty glare at Arthur. Where was the other one? She looked up and saw Franz poking around the fume hood before sticking his head inside. Ada noisily stood up and pulled him out of the fume hood before lecturing him on lab safety and pushing his fingers away from the metal grids. Those holes are for storing pens, not your hand. Rosalind grinned to herself. That's right, they would have to delay the fusion experiments until everyone's hands were fully healed. 

Rosalind must have said that out loud, because Napoleon began to inquire about fusion, and he was a very enthusiastic student. Unfortunately, it did not make up for his complete lack of understanding when it came to science. Ada and Napoleon had an animated discussion about atoms while everyone else was listlessly slumped against the pristine white walls. Arthur watched the science lesson with disdain.

“And that’s what people are made of! Little orbs.”

“Interesting....so people are made of....”

“Cells...”

“Yes.”

“But how is any of this related to fusion? How can those cells FUSE?”  
“That’s exactly what Ros, I mean, Dr. Franklin, and I are trying to find out! We’re preparing some studies, and we’ve got our samples from you and the others, and....all we can do is wait.”

“We’re taking a purely scientific line of reasoning for this?” Arthur asked.

“Of course we are, Your Grace. There’s a logical explanation for everything, and the fact that we even have the slightest doubt as to what we’re made of should be a clue that we must pursue this research. The clockwork of the world turns strangely.” Ada smiled and closed her laptop. “What we once thought was magic is really scientific fact.”

Arthur turned towards Franz and didn’t say anything.

“The sync chambers. We had to use those for a while before we could fuse,” Franz said. “Do we need them every time we fuse?”

Ada cleared her throat. “You shouldn’t. There is some literature on fusion, and apparently dancing works as a synchronization trigger. Obviously, it also requires a great degree of trust and intimacy between the partne-”

“And it requires dancing skills.” 

Napoleon glared at Arthur. 

“If looks could kill...” Franz muttered under his breath. Josephine patted his shoulder and reassured him that Napoleon wouldn’t dare deck his ex in front of so many people. 

“So that’s how it is. Hmph. It shouldn’t be too much of a hassle to get these chambers ready for Josephine and I tomorrow, considering that they were recently used. I suppose that Wellington won’t be needing them anymore.”

“Indeed....The children could operate the chambers on their own to great success, so I don’t expect any technical issues.” Rosalind instantly regretted putting emphasis on that word. Arthur was smiling maliciously while Franz and Josephine filled the room with their whispering. 

“I see.” Napoleon said, nodding. "Well, if that would be all, I think my wife and I would be better off resting for now." Napoleon stood and gestured for Josephine to follow. She didn't stand up immediately. 

Ada blocked the door with an arm. "Hold it, flyboy! We're not done yet." She looked at Ros, who gave a nod, then turned back to the Bonapartes. "Actually, Ros and I had a hypothesis."  
Napoleon interrupted before Ros could get a word in edgewise, tapping his feet on the floor with impatience. 

"What else is there to do? Josephine and I have been sitting here for hours, and we're not even part of this--" he gestured at the surgical tools, the weird blinking lights, the stark-white walls-- "whatever this is." His shoulders drooped imperceptibly. "We haven't slept since we arrived at 5 in the morning. Let us rest."

At this, Arthur rose slowly to his feet, his voice low and even and menacing. "Oh, I see." Arthur said. "You think this has nothing to do with you. You're tired, are you?" He spat these words bitterly, lips curled in a snarl. "Ha! As if you have any reason to be tired! You're not the one who's been treated like cattle all throughout your honeymoon! You're not the one who has to worry about synchronization tubes and disturbing nightmares! You're not the one who was just recently fused with another person, confused and shocked out of your wits, then unfused almost without warning! No, because so far, you've had a damn wonderful time, haven't you? So stand down!" 

The room fell utterly still and silent.

Napoleon stood straight, but his face betrayed surprise, with the way his eyes were wide open, brows furrowed, jaws slacked for a split second. Josephine covered her mouth, looking sideways at nothing in particular.

Ros clenched her teeth, jaw locked tight, arms crossed over her chest, not saying a word. Ada walked over to her and placed a hand on her shoulder.

"Is something wrong?" Franz was the first to break the silence, looking at Arthur with such a heartbreaking expression that all of Arthur's anger was immediately flushed down with guilt and worry.  
Arthur immediately rushed over to Franz, kneeling next to him and cradling his face. "No, darling. Nothing's wrong. Absolutely nothing wrong." Arthur whispered and ran his fingers through Franz's hair, hoping to calm him down. "I'm not mad, see? I'm just tired, we're both tired, we're all tired." Arthur turned to Rosalind. 

"Perhaps we should all take a break before we do anything else." 

Rosalind nodded and unfolded her arms. "Of course, Your Grace."

Arthur intertwined Franz's fingers with his, and walked wordlessly past Napoleon and out of the room. The moment he left, Rosalind sighed and put a hand on Josephine’s shoulder.

“Is it always like this with your husband?” she whispered.

“No...I thought the Duke would be too occupied with Franz to start this again. I just hope that they won’t, you know, fuse again. Well, Franz doesn’t seem like the type who would go to such lengths to prove a point. But I don’t know about the Duke...” Josephine smiled nervously. “Just keep an eye on everyone until you’re ready for the experiments. I know Napoleon won’t mind if it’s for science.”

Rosalind smiled back and left the Bonapartes alone. She decided that some fresh air was in order and walked onto the deck. It was a beautifully sunny day at sea and she squinted at the dark shapes of Ching Shih’s fleet following the ship, some close enough to shout at and others mere dots on the horizon. There was a rolling wall of white clouds in the distance ahead. She walked around aimlessly, watching the pirates clean up and carry furniture out of the rooms for later resale. A low murmur caught her attention and Rosalind quickly hid behind a corner when she saw that it was Franz and Arthur.

“Arthur...I’m so sorry. I couldn’t have known that Josephine would show up and that this pirate captain knew so many strange scientists.”

“Relax. There’s not much we can do about it right now, can we? The magicians are looking for a way to get us to China soon so once we’re there, we can just fly back to California. Besides, this is technically part of our vacation.”

“.....You’re right. We should be in Los Angeles already. Dr. Thompson will probably be calling me tomorrow. You know how he is, impatient and all-”

Dr. Thompson? Rosalind thought. Maybe the children know something about him. After all, they’re the ones who summoned Kafka....

She continued watching the couple. 

“Who cares about him? Hm? We’re needed here, whether we like it or not. Besides, after hearing the countess talk I’m a little bit curious as to how George works.” 

Franz smiled and looked down at his husband. “Yes, you’re right. Somehow, I feel that learning about fusion and George and everything else isn’t something that we can do in the lab. It’s an experience. We just have to explore George and tell everyone else about him.”

“I don’t think the ladies are going to take that as empirical proof.”

Damn right I won’t. Rosalind thought.

“That’s how Dr. Thompson did all of his research on me, so it must count for something. Besides, it’s like what the countess said. Poetical science. Phenomena like this cannot be easily described, all you can do is watch.” 

Arthur hugged Franz and stroked his hair. “Please...just stop worrying about Stanford right now.”

“Then what should I do?”

“Let’s fuse.”

Rosalind quickly slipped away from her corner and bumped into Jo, stumbling into the wall.

“What are you doing? You almost blew my cover.”

“Cover from what?”

Rosalind waved her hand. “Aren’t you supposed to be searching for something to sacrifice?”

“We were. But I figured out Mudkip’s secret! There’s a pocket dimension made of slime!”

The trio was quiet for just long enough to catch Franz spin Arthur around and light up the corner. George stretched and sighed loudly before murmuring something to himself.

“HI!!!” Jo shouted. Rosalind tripped over Jen’s robes while attempting to run and died a little. George peeked around the corner and his eyes widened when he saw the hooded figures waving cheerfully. He started to say something and immediately turned into a shining blob of light before coming apart, leaving Franz sprawled on the deck. He waved back and blushed before giving the most insincere smile that Rosalind had seen. 

What kind of guy.... she picked herself up and turned back to the hooded figures. “You were saying?”

“Jen went inside Mudkip and uhh...you tell her, Jen.”

“It was completely full of slime that kept changing colors and textures, and I found a bubble of air inside, so there’s probably more air pockets out there. Everything that Mudkip had swallowed was there, too. Ship parts, rocks, food...”

“Everything?”

Jen listed about ten more items to confirm that everything Rosalind had fed to Mudkip was indeed in the slime dimension. Some of it more intact than others.

“Well...this is great! Ada and I can look into this, you can keep searching for your sacrificial lamb, and the couples can rest for a few days!” Rosalind gave Jen a little thumbs up, but she frowned. 

“Um...Dr. Franklin, is there something wrong? You were hiding from George earlier.”

Rosalind sighed and leaned against a pole. “Can you two keep a secret?”

The hooded figures nodded enthusiastically. 

“I made a mistake by bringing Napoleon on board. The Duke, I can deal with. Dismissive men like him are a dime a dozen no matter what year it is. Franz seems nice enough and he usually stays out of the way. Fine by me. I’ve already known Josephine for a while now, and well, I really like her. She’s one of my dearest friends, especially now that I don’t exactly have anyone that I can just talk to...” Rosalind rubbed her eyes. “Sorry. I just don’t know how I’m going to manage so much. I’m already taking a huge risk by coming out here, on a stolen ship, with equipment that doesn’t even follow the known laws of biology, to do personal research. There’s no way I can do a good job while trying to keep track of everyone’s quirks and old grudges.” 

“I can help!” Jen said. “I know too much about Franz, and both of us know lots about the Duke, so at least we can deal with those two. As for Napoleon....you could ask Josephine?”

“Yes...this could work. I’ll have to talk to Josephine in private later. She knows him like she knows her own mind, but we need someone a bit more forceful to keep him in line on this project. If George wants to be George that’s his business and everyone has to work with it. At the end of the day we’ll just go off on our merry ways once the ship reaches Shanghai.”

The hooded figures nodded and smiled at Rosalind. She watched them run off and sighed. They were just kids. God forbid that something happened to this ship. Rosalind started walking towards the bridge.

_______________

“How much metal do we need again?”

“50 square meters, I reckon. Right now the mechanics are looking to scrap the helicopter that’s crashed into the deck on the cruise ship, but that’s probably not going to be enough. Our other option is scuttling one of the gunboats and using the siding from-”

Ching Shih pounded her desk. 

“How many times do I have to tell you, we need every single ounce of firepower we can get! Ros and Ada were chased onto the helicopter. Who knows whether they know where this ship is, and where we’re heading? The entire fleet needs to be ready for an engagement at any time, especially once we’re getting closer to shore. Any day now, if those magicians can find something. Where are they, anyways?”

“Um...last report came from the fifth engine room. The slimy thing should still be there, but we don’t know about the magicians.”

Ching Shih sighed and rested her face in her hands. How many years had it been since she last dealt with kids? No, concentrate. Where would two young magicians want to hang out on an empty cruise ship? Oh god, what if they got into the cruise kitchens? That nice wine is not for them. Neither is the ice cream machine.

“Fuck it. Do another search.”

“Captain, this is the fourth search in twelve hours-”

“Just bring them here, alright? Scram!”

The pirate saluted and ran out of the room. Ching Shih steepled her fingers and watched the door. She was on a mission. Get these civilians and cargo to Shanghai. Wait for further instructions. 

It was a nice change of pace from your usual drug trafficking. Ros and Ada knew that but Ching didn’t know how fine they were with it. Oh well. She didn’t worry too much about these things. A job well done would speak for itself. 

She wished those kids would learn that lesson. 

___________________

Those kids crouched behind a window and watched the soap opera unfold inside the lab. They couldn’t hear much behind the bulletproof glass but everyone’s body language was entertaining enough. Napoleon was leaning against Josephine’s shoulders and alternating between sighing and saying something to Ada, who managed to carry a conversation without ever looking from her laptop. It was actually a bit scary how natural that seemed for her. Franz and Arthur were still outside, and Rosalind was noticeably jumpy around Josephine. 

“I mean...schedule wise, I’ll probably have to have Ada supervise George while I take care of you. We can’t be everywhere at once. Would that work for you?”

Josephine thought for a moment before glancing at Napoleon. He was safely occupied by his phone. Josephine said that yes, it would be wonderful and perhaps it would lift Napoleon’s spirits, and that she would rather assign Ada to dancing duty while Ros could take a look at George. The ladies decided that would be a better plan. Rosalind decided not to tell Josephine that she had just saved her from an afternoon of awkwardly trying to figure out the programming behind the dance pads. The hooded figures ducked as Rosalind walked past the window.

“You can dodge her, but you’re never getting away from me!” Ching Shih grabbed Jen’s hood and she screamed before turning around and seeing who it was. 

“H-Hey, captain! We were just checking up-”

“Don’t even bother with that crap. What have you two been up to?”

The hooded figures looked at each other sheepishly. Ching didn’t look like she really wanted an explanation. So they shrugged and grinned at her.

Oh boy.

“Look, it’s not going to be long until sunset. Is everything alright in there? Where’s the other two?”

“They’re off...fusing. I’m not quite sure what’s happening inside. Everyone is pretty cranky and Ros and Ada just lost quite a bit of blood.”

Ching nodded thoughtfully and looked over the ocean. The blue was tinged with a glowing, yellow tint and the sun was beginning to noticeably sink into the waves. The rest of the fleet was pulling into its night formations around the flagship and the cruise, wary of anyone who was dogged enough to follow the Rifteds out here. The hooded figures are going to need a lot of blood, Ching thought. There’s no way we can take the whole fleet....

Ching opened the lab door and leaned in. 

“Do you want to call it a day? Doesn’t look like you want to stay here any longer.”

Rosalind looked a bit embarassed at the question, but she nodded. Ada responded by stretching and watching Rosalind walk out before closing her laptop. Napoleon gently nudged a dozing Josephine and they followed, huddled next to each other despite the thick summer heat. 

“...anyways, I’m taking a liking to the Empress.”

“Really. Er...” Arthur and Franz had been walking nowhere in particular and watched the other Rifteds retreat to their rooms. Nobody would make eye contact with them save for Ching Shih, who nodded curtly at them and then strolled towards some pirates. 

“What’s the matter now?”

“Bed time. Nobody can stand....the heat.” Jo said. “What a nice day.” they turned around and tried to act natural while watching the sunset. 

Franz frowned at Arthur and pulled him along.

“Oh, come on, you too? What can you see that I can’t?”

“Arthur...” Franz sighed. “Just let it go. Look, we can talk about this once we’re alone.” 

The hooded figures leaned against the railing and triumphantly watched as they sent several grown adults to bed. 

“Now that’s conflict resolution!” Jen said.

“Conflict resolution means sleeping at 8 PM?”

Ching Shih cleared her throat and the hooded figures got quiet.

“Listen. You said that you could take this ship to Shanghai in two weeks, but you don’t have any blood to power that rift. Lemme ask you. Does the blood have to come from...death?”

“Uhh... what do you mean?”

“Does it work if you don’t kill anyone?”

“Yeah! Look, I’ve got a magician’s glove right here.” Jen rolled up her sleeve and revealed a red glove embedded with shiny metal tubes that ran along the fingers and ended in a small switch on the wristband. “When you flip the switch the glove will take some blood and then it’s in your hands and you can use spells. You just have to keep it clean.”

Ching Shih took her hand and examined the craftsmanship. 

“Alright. Hopefully Rosalind won’t mind if we borrow some of her stuff.” 

“What do you mean, captain?”

“Just go back to the hull and keep cleaning, alright? My men are tied up with the helicopter right now.” Ching waved them off and walked towards the empty laboratory. The hooded figures decided not to question it and ran downstairs.

__________

The Aesthetician hummed a patternless tune as she gathered the empty glasses of blackberry limeade and walked through the showroom with the glasses stacked on a tray. She reminded herself to serve the drinks with the lime facing left tomorrow. Variety was the spice of life. She suddenly stopped in her tracks when a loud grinding noise echoed behind the walls. What on earth could be happening there? She set the tray on a kitchen counter and, with great effort, pushed the granite wall panels aside before stepping in. The Aesthetician pushed her way past the dense layer of pipes and wires into the open concrete halls. She followed her ears.

“No, no, be gentle. They aren’t anchored to anything inside there. Know what that means? One wrong move and bam! There goes 20 years of work! But if you get it on the platform, everything else is smooth sailing.”

“Um...uh, terribly sorry, boss.”

“Just shut up and watch the edges. Then you won’t have to apologize.”

The Aesthetician poked her head around the corner and saw two hooded men standing next the big-handed, broad-shouldered manager. The hooded men held their glowing hands aloft as they cautiously levitated the entire dummy tank towards a low, wheeled cart. The Aesthetician gasped a little when it hit the cart with a low clang and the men slowly herded it down the hall. The manager must have heard her, because he turned around and approached the corner. 

“Hey, what’s the matter? Shouldn’t you be leaving through the A gateway?”

“Oh! I’m terribly sorry! I just heard something back here, and I wanted to see what was wrong. Why is the tank in the B halls?”

“You know, we had that security breach a few days ago. Someone cut a hole in the fence and then went through some files about how we opened the rifts. And now the Refugee’s sick again, and it would probably be safer to just move his tank further away from the surface so they won’t be compromised.”

The Aesthetician nodded and bit her lip. Well, she couldn’t argue with that logic. 

“Not a very good week, is it?”

The manager laughed. “Not at all.”

“This is all just odd, I tell you.” The Aesthetician said. “Two nights ago I was watching the Refugee in there-”

“Were they all intact?”

“Yes, but they looked...happy.”

“Joyful?”

“Yes.”

The manager crossed his arms and took a deep breath. It was true, the Refugee had been more restless ever since the beta version was summoned. Two years later he was still writing incessantly about dreams and reaching out and there were days when everyone in the compound was afraid it would be the day everything fell apart, the day the Refugee lifted an arm and decided to fight. Maybe it would be better if they just kept him sick for a while. In his 17 years of captivity the Refugee had produced more than enough material for Pirch to advance their philosophy. In one year the beta had finished a novel. He really was born to write, wasn’t he? But the Refugee and the tank were not quite the same thing. The tank bodies weren’t supposed to feel anything, not even joy. The manager looked up to find the Aesthetician nervously wringing the ends of her scarf. 

“Aw, it’ll be fine, I promise. Look, I’ll call you down when they’re done with the installation. Then you can show me whatever it is that’s wrong with the Refugee, alright?”

The Aesthetician looked a bit calmer and nodded. She ended up back in the showroom with misty eyes and a tray of empty glasses. 

________

That night, the manager spun around in his chair and picked up the intercom. He was itching to get this move over with and go home for some dinner. 

“Aesthetician. Report to my office immediately.”

He waited for a few moments, listening for the sound of high heels on tile. Nothing. He called for her again on the intercom. When that produced no Aesthetician, the manager sighed and decided to just check on the tanks alone. 

The manager went through three security checkpoints and two elevators on his way down to the dummy chamber. Sure, it was a bit of a hassle, but it had kept the deepest, most sensitive layers of the complex secure for decades. If he was the sort of person to be giddy with excitement, the manager would be screaming at the mere thought of seeing the chamber in use. He caught the slightest whiff of perfume lingering in the elevator. Could it be?...

Several layers of metal doors slid past the manager’s face and opened into a wide, round chamber. None of the lights were installed yet, so the only thing lighting his path was the tank. The glass was seamlessly merged with the concrete around it, making the room feel like a true aquarium. The bodies inside drifted against a backdrop of glowing blue like a morbid screensaver. The smell of perfume mingled with rain.

The Aesthetician stood in shadow, gazing in wonder at the tank. 

“How on earth did you find your way here alone?”

She turned around.

“Intuition.” The word came out forceful and cold.

The manager stood next to her and squinted at the incubating bodies in front of him. They all seemed normal, but then again, The Aesthetician was more in tune with the Refugee. She was the more....spiritual side of Pirch.

“Look carefully. Watch their expressions.”

Sure enough, a few of the bodies were doing more than just staring off into nothing. Some of them were smiling, but they were all empty smiles that didn’t spread to the eyes. One body floating towards the back had widened eyes and its eyebrows were furrowed into something that resembled worry.

“The first night I saw them, the Refugee was all smiling. I think he’s calmed down a bit.” 

“That was the night after the security breach....do you think they-I mean, he, was expecting it? I don’t think the intruder was trying to kidnap the Refugee.” Oh shit, he said too much. Why would the Refugee ever be happy to be taken out of Pirch? 

“I...I have a confession to make. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen the Refugee’s expressions change.”

The manager turned to the Aesthetician in surprise. 

“What? Wait, when are you even observing the tank?”

“At night...when I can’t sleep...”

“Which is how often?”

“A few times a week. I'm so sorry, if that’s going to interfere with the Refugee, or my training, or anything, I’ll stop immed-”

“No, no, you should be fine. It’s good actually, that you take such an interest in the Refugee’s welfare. Anyways, tell me more about these changes. When did they start?”

The Aesthetician took a deep breath and started tracing all of the events of the past two years and the ebb and flow of her intuition. Immediately after the beta was summoned they were all fearful like that one in the back, and then they would move away from the glass whenever she reached out. After a few months a few of them started smiling and don’t you remember, that’s when they nearly all fell apart because of the broken pH regulators? The regulators that overheated and practically melted off the tank? Yes, ever since then there’s always been a few smiling bodies, and then sometimes they all have an open expression of wonder and drift limply through the fluid and then they all settle towards the bottom of the tank. The last time they were all smiling was this June, and then right after the security breach. Strange, isn’t it? 

“That seems to imply that he’s connected to the beta, somehow. This, and all of the things that the Refugee keeps writing about. Well, thank you for letting me know. I’ll have the researchers look into this.”

“My pleasure.”

“Don’t stay up too late. You have an operation tomorrow.”

“Understood.”

The Aesthetician watched the manager step into the elevator and whoosh away. She turned around and took off the pin on the knot of her scarf. It was Pirch’s logo, a large enamel leaf with gilded edges and a thin black stem coming off of the end. The Aesthetician held it for a while without saying anything. She looked up. None of the bodies seemed to notice. 

She held her pin to the glass and tapped on it a few times. The bodies in her immediate vicinity all diverted their gaze towards the pin. 

“Do you know what this means?” The Aesthetician asked.

She waited for several minutes but didn’t get an answer. They stared and their expressions fell a little. Disappointed and slightly offended by their reaction, the Aesthetician put the pin back on her scarf and left the chamber. There was no way she could let this mystery elude her. If only she had captured those scientists.

They would have to try again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There were many questionable decisions made in this chapter and as a result I recommend that you do not try any of this at home. Especially the pin thing. Why would you have that at home, anyways?


	11. Dinner at Josephine's

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> mmmmmm hungee rifteds

Arthur's stomach growled while Arthur's face scowled. "We should get something to eat." He stood up from the edge of the bed and walked to the door, opening it slightly and looking around.

Franz looked up from rummaging through their bags, searching in vain for a protein bar or something to chew on. "You heard the children," he said. "It's bedtime. I think we're not allowed to leave the room."

Arthur raised an eyebrow at this. "We're letting children run our lives now?"

"Well, they do seem to know what they're doing, given..." Franz gestured around with a hand. "You know, all of this. And I think the captain wouldn't want us wandering about either." No protein bars, but he did find a stick of gum, some mints, a packet of powder (probably sugar), a box of tea, and some plastic spoons.

Arthur ducked back into the room and crouched conspiratorially. He was planning something again, Franz could see it in the slight squint of his eyes. 

"Hey, do you want to do something fun?"

Franz leaned forward. "Well, I....it’s been a long day. I’m sorry, I’m just too tired and I don't think either of us are ready for that one thing I showed you--"

"I'm talking about raiding the food stores." Arthur almost said something, as an afterthought, but he only smiled and shook his head, patting Franz on his thigh.

"Oh! Oh, okay. Right." Franz leaned back. "Alright, what's our plan?"

\------------------------------

"I'm bored." Napoleon whined pathetically.

"Well hello, Bored, I'm Josephine." She idly flicked through a magazine, trying not to think about dinner. One of the advertisements just happened to be food. Her stomach whined, also pathetically.

Napoleon contemplated whether to roll again, but upon hearing Josephine, he decided that he was in the mood for a third option, suddenly sitting up and cracking a spine in the process. "Are you hungry? Yes you are." He didn't even wait for Josephine to respond. "We're going to the kitchen. Maybe we can make something stereotypically French, like crepes or something."

"But you can't even cook." Josephine closed the magazine and stood up, dusting her flannel pajamas (which she stole from one of the forgotten luggages). "You can't even use a microwave."

"Any day is a good day to learn something new." Napoleon said, straightening his back and gently tugging at her sleeve.

\-------------------------

The two hooded figures were sent off to bed...technically. Realistically, this is nearly impossible; what kind of teenager, dabbling in rift magic and illegal summoning practices, even bothers with rules? Ching Shih knows this. She assigned guards by the porthole, by the door, even by the grates, fully anticipating some weird, slippery escape plan from the two. Even so, she was still gonna make a thorough check by herself. Just in case.

She knocked on the kids' door. When they seemed to give the OK, Ching Shih opened it to find both of them playing on their--what were those shiny rectangle bastards called--phones. Boxes and small empty crates littered the floor. Somehow, even though they were under the room lights in a relaxed setting, the hoods remained in place and kept their faces in shadow.

"Grandma!" One of the figures called out. Ching Shih frowned deeply.

"What are you two doing?" she asked. "And how do your hoods even do that?"

"We're just waiting until something else happens. And the hood thing is magic, I think." Jen didn't move her attention from the phone, being focused on swiping things.

"Right. Aren't you two planning on doing something? You know, sneak out, do magic shit, whatever teenaged people do these days."

Jo made a soft, ugly screech at their phone, apparently failing at something. "Nah, we're gonna sleep this one out, probably. We're kinda tired."

Ching Shih nodded. "Where's Mudkip?"

"Kip's out back, recovering. It's kinda bad to be around him right now, given that he just recently puked me up." Jen said. 

Jo added, "He needs to chill, lmao." They said "lmao" out loud, as if they actually expect Ching to be good with slang.

"Oh. Okay, then." Ching Shih sat on one of the boxes. "And you two? Not gonna sneak around like usual"

"Nope."

"No magic?"

"Nah."

Ching Shih nodded at this and waited. She waited for them to do something strange or magical. Faint game music rang out from Jen's phone. Ching Shih tapped her feet. Jo started watching videos.

Either the kids were actually tired, or they were just waiting for the perfect opportunity to bail. Well, Ching Shih wasn't gonna give them that satisfaction this time. If they were gonna wander around the ship, they might as well have the captain with them to make sure they aren't up for trouble. She tugged the kids into standing position, saying, "Get up, maggots. We're going on a trip."

\-------------------------

 

Ada and Rosalind were not really obligated to follow the curfew, being two of the more responsible passengers of the ship. They were currently looking through abandoned luggage for anything useful, since they didn't have a chance to pack their own things: toiletries, dry snacks, batteries, wiring, odds and ends. Abandoned luggage should have been easy scoring, but by now most of the stuff has been raided by pirates, or the Bonapartes if Napoleon wasn't feeling too prickly about it.

Not too much luck in their search, but they did find some large flannel shirts. Ros put one on over her clothes and tied the other around Ada's waist; Ada totally let her. They had been searching for half an hour when, finally, Ada suggested, "Have we looked in the kitchen yet?"

\-----------------------

"This mission requires grace, stealth, and finesse. Remember that, Josephine." Napoleon then proceeded to duck and barrel-roll his way through the hallway and to the corner turn.

Following a little further behind meant Josephine was free to roll her eyes at this. "You know I literally have more experience here than you do," she hissed at his back.

"Shh. Someone might hear us," Napoleon stage-whispered. He signaled to move forward, two fingers up and gesturing to a door. He tucked his head between his shoulders, hunched over and looking even more suspicious.

There were two entrances to the ground cruise kitchen. One entrance was through the dining hall, where dishes were served to the passengers. Another entrance was for the workers in the back, used mostly as an exit so that trash could be disposed of away from the food.

Of course, Napoleon decided to enter through the back doors for maximum sneakiness. He pushed the back door open just the slightest bit; after apparently confirming that nobody was inside, he slipped in, beckoning for Josephine to follow. The lights were off, blown out and flickering in part due to the unfortunate helicopter crash, while utensils and raw ingredients scattered around the floor, rolling one way or the other depending on the ship's tilt.

Meanwhile, the Duke of Wellington walked with ease to the front of the dining hall, one hand twined with a curious Franz. Arthur's eyes scanned the hall, eyeing overturned tables and wilted flowers. The light flickered. He kicked a discarded wine bottle, and it almost hit the swinging door on the other side. Franz watched it roll away, then turned to Arthur. "Wait, I forgot what we were doing again."

Arthur, with a foot placed on one chair, hands on hips, posturing regally as if for a painting, replied, "We're hunting for our food, as God intended men to do since the dawn of time." Arthur was probably trying for a casual remark or a simple joke, but it was just a little too funny, at least to Franz's tired brain, because this was not the rainforests of Idaho (he did not know American geography), this was their honeymoon, and this was a cruise ship in possession of a hundred pirates, some Rifteds, two magical children, and a gaping hole on the side. Damn, what a miracle it is to be in this moment! He smiled, then snickered, and the air in his lungs worked itself up into its own miracle: Franz, covering his mouth, gave up and buried his laughter into Arthur's neck.

Arthur startled for a moment at this, then he laughed too, because he didn't think that the joke was that funny, but Franz was laughing for the first time in hours, and his breaths tickled Arthur's neck, and his laugh was really, really nice to hear right then.

Napoleon stopped in his tracks. Josephine thought that this was, in equal measures, endearing and annoying. In any case, she crouched behind the swinging door while Napoleon stayed behind. She peeked through the gap to check for the noise. She saw the Duke and his gangling husband swaying around in the half-dark, giggling. For a second, she imagined what it would be like for her and Napoleon to sway like that, in easy comfort, but they were long past the honeymoon stage. She shook that sad thought away then turned around to inform--

Napoleon had already slipped into the meat lockers.

"What edible food are you going to find in there?" She whispered. Too late; Napoleon had already slipped into the meat locker, closing the door with a click. From the calm expression on Napoleon's face, Josephine could tell that he did not yet know that he was locked in. Well then--there was no point in unnecessarily panicking him, and he seems to be having a grand time, so Josephine let him be for a moment while she looked around for actual edible food. She went around the kitchen and found scattered stacks of metal cylinders with things like "corned beef" or "tuna" or "shitty bitz" slapped on them--canned goods, she remembered a second later. She went further down the hall to check her options.

Meanwhile, Ada and Rosalind were on their way to the dining hall. Ros casually folded up the flannel sleeve all the way to her elbows, and Ada noted the way that the cloth billowed around Ros's hip and hugged her arm snugly at the shoulders. Ros noted that the sleeves tied around Ada's waist made her figure stand out better. These thoughts they kept to themselves. Ros reached the dining hall, stopping--causing Ada to bump into her--to find the Duke and his husband making eyes at each other or something. 

"Even here! Is there no escape..." Ada threw her hands in the air. 

"Your Grace," Ros said. "What brings you here? Weren't you all supposed to stay in your rooms?"

Franz turned, still smiling a little. Ada nudged Ros. "You're seeing this, right? This isn't a trick of the light?"

The kitchen door swung open to let in Ching Shih with two trailing hooded figures behind her. "So," she said. "What do kids like eating again? Can either of you cook?"

The hooded figures looked at each other. "Well, we can cook potions--"

"None of that magic bullshit with me right now." To her surprise, the hooded figures snickered at her remark. Ching frowned deeply, but not in a bad way. "I take that as a 'no'." Then she noticed the other people in the room. 

"Hell, what part of 'go to bed and stay there' do none of you get?" 

Arthur said, "I am a grown man--"

Franz stopped him there. "We were just looking for food, since we skipped dinner and all." 

Arthur's gaze slipped to the two children behind Ching. "Oh, but those two are allowed to just gallivant then?"

"In our defense, the captain-ma'm dragged us out here." Jen said. 

The kitchen door swung open again, this time to reveal Josephine with an armful of food and a stuffed cloth bag with more food. "I heard voices. Oh, we're all here, might as well--" She promptly dumped most of her haul on the floor, and cans rolled to Ching's feet. The one labeled "shitty bitz" was a little rusty and very suspicious, and it growled at her, so she kicked it away.

"Um, Josie, where's your husband?" Ada asked, tucking the earlier finds into one of the huge flannel pockets (good god these are amazing). 

"He went in the meat locker. I don't think he knows he's locked in yet." Josephine replied.

Jen perked up at this. "Actually, uh, we should get him out of there."

Jo added hysterically. "YO Mudkip is unstable! He can't--!" They didn't finish the sentence before a muffled scream bled through the dining hall.

"YOU COULDN'T HAVE TOLD ME THAT SOONER?!" Ching Shih yelled before ducking into the back room. The others followed suit. A huge, slimy pseudopod burst through the locker door and Napoleon swore. Loud clattering followed, and he pried the door open. He couldn’t do much but stand hunched-over while catching his breath and gesturing inside. The sight was, well, Lovecraftian, but at least they were sure that Napoleon was unhurt, judging from the frantic shaking of the heavy door. Frozen racks of ribs were scattered all over and there was nothing but a few red shreds of meat hanging on the hooks. Mudkip was just as lively and a smidge more smug.

Ching Shih, exasperated, punched the door open, dragged Napoleon out by the collar, and shut the door on Mudkip. "You two," she barked at the hooded figures. "Clean this up!" The kids nodded, stuffed the hole in the door, and grabbed mops (without using magic). 

A few minutes and ten buckets of seawater later, Napoleon was relatively smudge-free once more. Ah, but the smell stuck. Meanwhile, in those few minutes, many pictures were taken, many ears were talked off, and many cuss words were let out. Ching wondered how the kids could even cause this much trouble even when they were planning on staying in their rooms that night.

"We did say Mudkip was chilling!"

Arthur sneered and mocked. Napoleon, now salty in three ways, screeched how immature Arthur was. Franz and Josephine sighed and gave each other a meaningful, why-are-our-husbands-like-this look. Ada and Ros took this time to swipe some of the wiring from some of the broken appliances. It was exhausting for everyone involved.

Someone's stomach growled rudely, and the group stopped chittering. 

"...We were supposed to be looking for food." Franz said.

"Oh, right." Arthur finally stopped grimacing, distracted by the prospect of food. Napoleon settled down as well, seeing that Arthur wasn't going to continue. 

Finally, finally, everyone re-settled at the dining hall. Everyone was seated and calm, Mudkip was safe in the locker, the two hooded figures were not using magic, and the women were talking with Franz, discreetly laughing about Napoleon's experience with Mudkip. They were having a wonderful time, especially as they're now just eating and talking without having to worry about the science and the afternoon's events. Everyone except for the old men, who sat across from each other just waiting for the other to talk.

Napoleon, predictably, went first. "So, not fused again. Tired of it? Or you just can't do it?" 

Arthur crossed his arms. "What now, there's no need to be jealous of me as usual." 

"I'll bet you my fusion with Josephine will be better."

"Your fusion is just a cheap tactic to make your weak marriage stronger." 

"I'll show you who's weak."

"Bring it on." 

"Alright, that's it!" Napoleon stood up, catching everyone's eyes. "Josephine and I are gonna fuse tomorrow. Sink dancing and everything, whatever that is. Then we'll see what's what." He pointed this at Arthur. "Don't get too jealous."

With that, the night was effectively over. Napoleon stormed out of the hall. Josephine said, "Same time tomorrow?", and followed. Ros pulled Ada up, waved goodnight, and the two went off to their own rooms. Franz wrapped an arm around Arthur's shoulder and ushered him off too. Only the captain and the two kids remained.

Ching Shih turned to the kids. "Look, I don't know how, but you little bastards are behind this."

They admitted to this pretty easily. "Mudkip was a happy accident, but yeah. Thanks for grounding everyone before dinner. This gives us the perfect opportunity to use the chambers again."

Jen deadpanned, "Congratulations. You played yourself."

Ching Shih frowned deeply, but in a good way.

\-----------

The next afternoon, the Rifteds and the hooded figures filed into the gym. Three sets of synch mats were laid side by side while two large speakers loomed at the front of the room. Crop tops were handed out beforehand, and everyone (minus Ching and the kids) were properly dressed.

It is perfectly normal in the twenty-first century for women to wear less conservative clothing, Ada thought. It is also perfectly normal, on hot days or during exercise, for women to wear short, loose shirts, or crop tops, as the kids said. Looking at Ros with her shoulders out and some skin peeking under the musical crop tops is perfectly normal on a day like this. Perfectly normal. Wow, isn't it a little warm? Muggy? Must be the high noon.

Ros took a cursory glance at Ada in the tight-fitting suit and crop top, turned away, then glanced again, making the excuse of cracking her neck or whatever.

This was not the first time that Arthur had a glance at Franz's bare stomach--sweet Jesus knows--but damn those crop tops anyway. Franz poked Arthur in the rib. Arthur laughed and swatted him away.

Napoleon fumed in the background, barely sparing a glance at his own wife. Josephine took a picture of Napoleon with an iPad. 

Ching Shih was between the two hooded figures who were each fiddling with the systems. "Hey, something's wrong with everyone."

Jen replied, "Oh, that just means the crop tops are working." 

To which Jo added, "Except for that guy." They sighed. "Someone put a little too much salt on that french fry."

"Alright, tell me how this works." Ching grabbed a screen while Jen pointed at the colorful buttons. Disco lights flashed at random; curtains went up and down; Ching was probably button-mashing now.

Meanwhile, Jo called attention. "OK! Franz, Arthur, y'all know the drill. Ros, Ada, you guys saw this yesterday, you've got this. Napoleon, please synchronize with Josephine's dance moves. You all won't have the same dancing style, but at least stay on rhythm for now. No rush, it usually takes a while." 

Napoleon gestured for Josephine to follow him. Music crawled out of the speakers. Napoleon stepped up to a mat.

"Actually, that mat is for Rosalind. Move a step over." Napoleon moved one mat over. He could feel the beats thrumming in his bones. He was feeling confident in this, tapping his feet and pulling Josephine close, leading her to a twirling ballroom number. 

"Okay, that's not how this works, sir. Uhm," Jen paused the music. "You're not supposed to be leading Josephine on the dance. You're supposed to dance alongside her. Allow Franz and Arthur to demonstrate?"

Franz and Arthur stepped up to their mats. Arthur sneered. Franz counted under his breath as the music played from the top. "1, 2, 3..." They pulled a nearly synchronized, though simple, routine that resembled a music video more than a Regency ball. There were some moments when Franz would hesitate or Arthur would rush, but enough practice made it easier. The song ended, they broke apart, and Arthur bowed arrogantly.

"Nice! Did we get that on video?" Jo nodded, holding a phone out under her sleeve. "Alright, our two ladies are up next. No pressure, we'll play you a slower song."

"It's a matter of patterns, right?" Ada whispered as she took Ros's hand. "You and I, we're good at patterns. This is cake." 

"You know," Jen whispered to Ching. "The hand-holding isn't necessary." Ching nodded sagely.

They hadn't previously decided on a dance. They struggled at first, tangling at the ankles. The crop tops weren't helping. Soon enough, they picked up the beat and they matched to it, though not quite exactly with each other. The disparity was noticeable enough.

"Wow, nice first try! Well, as expected from you two." Jo beamed. Turning to Napoleon: "Your turn."

As good as Napoleon was on the battlefield, he was two-left-feet levels of horrible at cooperation. It took them hours to help the couple assemble a doable routine. Other pirates who were on break occasionally passed by the doors and eyed the crop tops. 

Around five, the kids called for stop. Napoleon protested. "Just one more."

Even Arthur was no longer petty, just tired. "Let your wife rest. We've all been dancing for hours." He was helping Franz with cool-down stretches. 

Napoleon refused to back down on this. "Please, Josie? Just one more, I promise."

Josephine looked at him in the eye. "Are you doing this for us or just for yourself?" She dropped his gaze and moved toward the other women who sat between the speakers. They murmured sympathetically.

Franz appeared behind him, giving his back a solid thwap. "Would you like to hear some advice, if it might help?" Napoleon waved his hand in assent. "Don't think about yourself alone. You have the rhythm down...sort of...but you don't have the right reasons. Perhaps you should try...talking...to her, have some time for yourselves."

Napoleon was grudgingly thankful for his advice. Arthur doesn't deserve such a nice, gentle person. "Thank you. And apologies for earlier transgressions." All left the gym and moved to the chambers.

Napoleon trailed behind Josephine. He couldn't believe that he didn't notice until now how lovely the slope of her shoulders were under the thin fabric, how the shoulders were slightly tensed. He couldn't believe that he hadn't gotten a good look at his wife until now.

"Josephine, wait!" Josephine whirled back to him, waiting. Napoleon struggled with words. Sorry isn't enough. "I..." He promised that he would do better this time, didn't he? "I was wrong.

"I promised you that I wouldn't get caught up in any more war, but here I am being petty and stupid. For what? I shouldn't drag you down like this. Please," he stepped closer, cautiously tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "You don't have to forgive me right now, but...I don't know what to say. I really don't."

The tension seeped out of Josephine's shoulders. She sighed. "You don't always need to talk." She pulled him in for a hug. "This doesn't make up for anything, but okay."

In the chambers, Ada and Ros took their turn looking at the screens while the hooded figures strapped the Bonapartes in. Jen gave them a quick rundown. "Ok, don't worry about drowning in the chicken blood soup, you can breathe it in. This thing pulls the stuff out of your lungs but it feels weird. Just be chill and you're good." 

Strapped in, Napoleon looked at Josephine to see if she was okay. She gave a thumbs-up and leaned back. He closed his eyes as the fluid filled his vision and soaked through his clothes and climbed into his nose and past his eyes. The intricate screen of pipes and panels above him arched over him like the sky. He can see the Corsican fields, the "Chambre de l'Alcove", the rolling seas--

Josephine's eyes, framed by dark curls, the glittering chandeliers, Malmaison--

the narrow island, the Tsar--

Arthur snarling, tight grip--

his own face, regal and proud and passing a crown to place on his--no, Josephine's--head

Black. Then orange. He didn't want to open his eyes. It was impossibly warm. 

"...too fast? It shouldn't have been that fast..."

"...we were right..."

"...from the exact same time period, so..."

They opened their eyes. Lutetia looked down from a high place, anticipating but barely registering a shocked frown on Arthur's face. When Lutetia raised their chin and opened their mouth, they spoke in French: "Vouloir, c'est pouvoir."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone put too much salt on that french fry, and that someone is me


	12. Over Shadow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Too tired to live, too anxious to die

“Hey! 200%, the magic number! Now this is the fun part!” Jen tapped a few buttons on her iPad and the engines on top of the chamber started to churn. 

“When George formed, there was a clog in the valves, correct?” Ros asked.

“Yeah. But that was because they melted into LCL first and then reformed out of the bay.” Ada nodded thoughtfully and smiled. Ever since the ladies got ahold of this much LCL, Ada had zero regrets about watching Death, Rebirth, and End of Evangelion in one night, even if it did give her nightmares for a few weeks. She eyed the ripples below her. 

The suction pipes were lowered and the expectedly abnormal sputtering filled the room. Then the entire chamber shook. Like a hatching egg. 

Ros raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t mention that in the email.”

“Uhh....” Jo ran to the edge of the gangway and leaned over the railings. “Your majesties, you can come out now! It should be natural, just try to gather yourself!” The chamber shook again and the gangway reverberated up and down. Jen gulped and decided to open the door. Ada was about to object when it slid open and a huge cascade of LCL poured out, spraying everyone with pungent orange droplets. 

Lutetia was crouched between the two seats, bracing themselves against the walls with four arms. Glossy chestnut curls fell around their face as they looked up at Ros and Ada. There was an extra set of eyes under the normal ones, like eyeblack. 

“Do you have a towel?” they asked. “This dress....dress? (Dress! I’m wearing a dress.) I don’t want to ruin it.”

“GIANT!!!” the hooded figures shouted in unison. They ran up to Lutetia and curiously examined their lower arms, which were covered in silk opera gloves. Their upper half resembled something like Napoleon’s uniform in a familiar yet unplaceable portrait, while the rest of Lutetia’s outfit was a flowing, white empire-style dress. 

“You’re very pretty.” Jo said. “What do you want to be called when you’re like this, your majesty?”

“L U T E T I A.” 

Rosalind winced and covered her ears before writing it down on her hand. “Alright, don’t have to say it twice....” she mumbled.

Lutetia cocked their head to one side and laughed with a hand over their mouth. 

“Sorry, Rosalind. Oh! You two!” Jen let go of Lutetia’s dress and laughed as she ran away from those impossibly long arms. They grabbed Jen by the back of her robe and picked her up. 

“Whoa, whoa. Oh. It’s kind of cool being up here....” she grinned nervously at Lutetia’s eyes. 

“Hortense was just like you when she was your age. Well, not quite. Remember how upset she was when I got married?”

“.....uh, well, I knew that, but it’s not a memory per se-”

“Ah, if only she was here to see me!”

Lutetia abruptly dropped Jen on the ground and it took them a good minute to process what just happened. By then Ada had already helped her up and scribbled some more notes on her clipboard. 

“Ros? I’ll take care of the kids. You and Lutetia can do whatever you need to do,” Ada said. She slipped her laptop into her bag and Rosalind watched her drag the hooded figures away. Lutetia had a curious expression on their face. Rosalind wondered if they were....embarassed? 

“It’s alright. You saw how George nearly hurt me while trying to shake my hand. I suppose that controlling a fusion this large takes some getting used to. Doesn’t it, Josephine?”

“Indeed. I’ll tell her...eventually.”

Oh dear. Ros was going to have a lot of explaining to do later.

“What did the children do with George after he fused? Was he sent out on deck or did he break loose?”

Rosalind took a deep breath. It would only be right to tell the truth, but giving Lutetia the license to wander around would guarantee some unpleasant encounters. But something told her that Lutetia wouldn’t take confinement very well. She turned toward them. Lutetia was impatiently stretching their arms and whispering to themselves, trying to settle into their new form. 

“The kids let him out intentionally. Just a word of advice - don’t do anything stupid around Ching Shih or her men. They are a force to be reckoned with and Ching doesn’t quite trust us yet.”

“You speak as if she ever trusted us completely,” Lutetia said. “She is not a person who puts her faith in others. She couldn’t afford to.” 

Rosalind didn’t know what to say. 

“Anyways, I’ll be out. Thank you, Rosalind.”

“My pleasure....”  
___

“Oh, that’s disappointing. I guess I won’t bother catching up with season 2.”

“Yeah. But the manga is still going and it’s pretty good! Here, I’ve got screencaps...”

“Ada? Where are you?” Ching Shih called. Virtually all of the staterooms were empty, and random pieces of furniture were scattered throughout the halls. Some of the doors were open and swung a little whenever the ship hit a bigger wave. But otherwise, there was no indication which room belonged to who. 

“I’m in here!” Ada said. “The kids are here, too! That character looks interesting.” 

Ching poked her head through the door.

“Hi, Captain.” Jen said. “We’re looking at manga. Do you know anything about anime, or manga, like....at all?”

“Uh...” she turned to Ada for help. She just laughed and sat up. 

“The kids are suggesting shows to me, it’s not a big deal. Wish I had enough time to catch up on this season’s-”

“Rosalind wanted me to send you upstairs. It’s something to do with the readouts on the equipment, so I can’t help.”

“And the kids? We can’t let them have free reign of the place again. At the very least, Rosalind won’t have it.”

“Hey! I know what I’m doing,” Jen said. “I’ll just sit here with Jo, and we’ll watch anime. Nice and easy, and we aren’t causing trouble.”

“Please don’t use my laptop for that.” Ada said. She suddenly lunged towards Jo and grabbed their arm. “And don’t even think about touching my League account!”

Ching Shih cleared her throat and silently gestured for Ada to follow her. Together they went to the staircase at the end of the hall and started their way up. Everyone had underestimated the size of the cruise ship in their plans. Ada was seriously considering making a call to Ros to let her know that she’d be late.

“I’m actually a bit worried about Ros...” Ching said,

Ada frowned. “Why? She’s been working well on the ship. Hasn’t complained about seasickness at all”

“Something off about her during free time. If she’s not bothering Mudkip, she’s looking at the sea or pacing around belowdecks. Last night after dinner I saw her everywhere in the halls here, with the guest rooms. When you passed by she almost ran away!”

“And what were you doing in the halls?” Ada cried. “Aren’t you sleeping in the crew’s quarters?”

“I have to keep an eye out on those kids after dark.” Ching paused to pull the lock out of a door. “I don’t know what’s gotten into everyone.”

Now the pair was faced with a dark steel passage running up and down like an elevator shaft. A set of rungs was bolted to the far wall, which rumbled with the sounds of the ship. There was a small ring of blue light at the very top of the shaft, and the other end was completely lost in the darkness.

“I can’t jump that far....” Ada muttered.

“If an old lady like me can make it, so can you!”

Ching got a running start and leapt across the shaft, landing on a rung with an unpleasant thud. 

“Perfect landing,” she groaned. Ada watched the bottoms of Ching’s boots grow smaller and smaller as she headed up. 

Screw your courage to the sticking place! 

Ada tightened the straps on her laptop bag and jumped. The thick, warm air flew through her hair as she fell down, down into the....bright? Down? More like up!

Something bright and yellow flashed below Ada and threw her up the shaft as if she were a doll. To her surprise, she managed to fly near the rungs and held on for dear life. The light subsided with a loud clang.

“Did you drop your bag?” Ching asked from above. She was now at the very top, struggling with the hatch’s hinges.

“Uh...n-no....I’ll be there soon!” Ada shouted. What the hell? She was grateful for the flash keeping her anchored in the darkness, but thinking about it only made her uneasier. Where....what was that? Who did it? Could there be a magician hiding in there? Where are the kids right now? Ada shook her head and focused on climbing.

Rosalind was bent over a counter when Ada and Ching came into the lab. Ching took a seat and calmly surveyed her sterile, air-conditioned surroundings. Ada stood next to Rosalind. 

“Watch this”, Rosalind said. She picked up a small plastic plate with wells full of clear red blood and slid it into a drawer on the side of a large machine. The drawer closed automatically with a beep. Ada frowned and tugged on some of the plastic tubing around the counter. 

“Ros dear, I may be a programmer but I still remember how a mass spectrometer works.”

Rosalind held a finger in front of her lips and got up. She walked over to the mass spec itself, a long, noisy block of beige metal. 

“Listen.”

Something was humming and clicking beneath the casing. The clicking grew more rapid and gradually subsided before intensifying again.

“.....whose sample is in there right now?”

“Josephine’s. Every sample so far has been doing this to the machine and I’m going to need you to come here later and help me open it up. We can’t send a broken mass spec back to London.”

Ada pressed her ear against the metal casing. 

“Put a different sample in.”

Rosalind looked at her in confusion for a moment before realizing what Ada wanted to do. She smiled and got up to get the second sample. 

“I can’t imagine getting anything done without you around,” Rosalind said. Ada felt her heart skip a beat and diverted her attention to the smooth, mechanical movements of the machines. 

“While we’re waiting for that to start up, why don’t I show you the data?” Rosalind said. 

Ada sat down next to Rosalind and huddled with her around the screen. It was theoretically impossible to fit two grown women on the same swivel chair and Ada was getting distressed at how comfortable it actually was to be sitting against Rosalind. 

Ching Shih was getting bored. The machine was interesting, but she didn’t want to come off as stupid by asking too many questions. She figured it was better to leave the scientists alone, anyways. Ching yawned and stared at the piles of boxes scattered near a door in the corner. The boxes were concentrated around a wooden table covered in cotton balls and assorted metal tools laid out on paper towels. A red aluminum sign with a white cross was bolted to the door. Ching looked back at the scientists. They were completely engrossed in whatever the hell it was on the computer.

“My god, that can’t be possible. At least, not without some serious lead poisoning.”

“I know, right? I saw the same pattern in Napoleon’s sample and thought it was just the water in their house, but the Duke’s sample said otherwise.” 

“Hmm....”

“But hey, who knows with His Grace.” Rosalind exaggerated this last part with raised eyebrows.

Ada laughed heartily as Rosalind watched with a barely-suppressed smirk.

Ching quietly got up and walked towards the boxes. She ignored the open boxes that had tissue paper and little chunks of Styrofoam scattered around them. Ching crouched by a box sealed with yellow tape and phased her hand through the side, creating a large hole that she could peer through. She pulled out the corner of a plastic bag filled with tiny plastic tubes. No, that was far too small for what she had in mind. Ching scoured her memory. The syringes lying on the counter wouldn’t be enough. The simple answer of a knife and a bucket would be messy and dangerous. And most importantly, time-consuming. Every wave that rolled under the ship sent great shudders through the metal and Ching knew that she couldn’t trust the weather to stay pleasant at this time of year. They had to get to Shanghai soon. So she needed to gather blood soon. 

After phasing through most of the boxes and hiding behind most of the furniture in the lab, Ching came up with nothing remotely useful besides a box of latex gloves. She glanced at the scientists again and weighed her options. What was behind that door, anyways? Ching executed a smooth roll towards the doorstep and phased her way in.

Ching heard something rustle when she stood up and turned on the lights. She was standing in a partially unpacked operating room that was quite obviously not ready for operations, judging from the way that long strands of wire were duct taped haphazardly around cabinets and around the legs of a single swivel chair. A long, angled operating table with a crank coming out of the base was bolted to the center of the white linoleoum floor. Several black velcro straps were hanging loosely from the edges. Ching tried not to think about them and absent-mindedly walked towards a tall metal cabinet. She opened the door and was immediately greeted by shrieking and two lumps of black cloth tumbling into her. Mudkip flopped out of the top shelf with a loud splat.

“Shhh! What are you two doing in here?!” Ching whispered incredulously. 

“We were looking for stuff that would let us gather blood. And then Jo heard footsteps so we both just hid in the cabinet and-”

“Wait, you were trying to collect blood?”

“Yeah,” Jo said. “We need to get to Shanghai soon,”

“Before the ship falls apart.” Ching said.

“Before everyone here drives each other INSANE!!!” Jen shouted. “And it’s driving the people at home nuts, too! Have you seen the news?” She pulled out her phone and waved it around. 

Ching squinted. “You know I can’t read English good.”

“There’s a picture of a boat. That’s how I know they’re talking about us.”

“Hey look, a needle!” Jo reached up and plucked a plastic syringe off a shelf. Ching grabbed the whole box and gingerly dug through it in her work gloves. She shrugged. 

“You got something to hold blood in?”

“We’ll just keep looking....keep looking....”

The three of them split up and began turning the room upside down. It was a wonder that nobody was hurt, especially when Jen stepped on a squeeze bottle of saline and sent it skidding across the floor into Ching’s back. Instead of getting angry, she tossed the bottle at Mudkip, who gladly accepted the hydration. 

Jo was going to say something when they heard footsteps outside. They faded away and a distant door creaked shut. 

“.....Should we get out of here?” 

Ching shook her head. “Even if we don’t get caught, there’s no point in escaping if we don’t have our prize. Eh? If you want to be good at this you have to keep your goal in mind.”

“Good at what?” Jen asked.

“Helping us fight Pirch.”  
The hooded figures stopped talking for a while. Jo found a box of IV bags and silently fed it to Mudkip while whispering something to him. Mudkip perked up and slithered into one of Ching’s boots. She grimaced at the cold, wet slime.

“What the hell did you do?!”

“The IV bags are in the slime dimension and the slime dimension is in your boot. You go out first, and we’ll....figure it out later.”

Ching sighed. “Fair enough. I’ll see you then.”

She cautiously opened the door and nearly jumped out of her skin when the hinges groaned. But Ching was an expert at espionage, so she walked out like nothing had happened. 

Rosalind was gently rocking back and forth in her chair and idly clicking through spreadsheets. She didn't seem to notice Ching’s presence until she was standing right behind her.

“How is the data going?”

“Alright.” Rosalind said. She rubbed her eyes, and Ching noticed something cold and sad in her gaze. It did not scare Ching, but it was enough to make her start backing away. 

“Are you alright?”

“Alright.” 

Ching put her hands on her hips. “Come on, don't lie to me. I can tell when a woman is trying to hide her feelings.”

“It's Ada. I don't understand, it's just a lot of history. We were summoned together, we've been working and living together. Of course we became close. My closest colleague and my dearest...dearest....she's close. Yeah.”

“Aw, that's nothing to be sad about. It's good that you have someone who understands being Rifted.”

Rosalind sighed and rested her head on the table. 

“It is unacceptable. How am I supposed to be professional with someone like Ada? It’s not just a matter of feedback on papers, either. If we’re going to deal with Pirch, our ability to think rationally and operate efficiently is of utmost importance.”

Ching put a hand on Rosalind’s shoulder.

“You’re the only person on board with their head screwed on right. Don’t worry about it.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

Ching walked out without saying another word. Rosalind felt the door close. 

She simply could not work efficiently without a clear head. This would all have to come to a head, and Rosalind would make it happen herself. She could feel it in her bones. 

Rosalind did not notice the small puddle of seawater on the floor when she finally left the lab.  
____

The Duke and his consort were attempting to enjoy their cruise by resting on the remaining functional deck chairs. Unlike the past few days, it was not blindingly sunny. A few grayish strips of clouds blew across the sky and the breeze was cool. Franz was reading a book while Arthur tried to take a nap. Arthur woke up and groggily took off his sunglasses.

“Honey, do you mind?”

“Mind?” 

“There was something noisy back there...” Arthur said. He sat up and stretched his arms in the sun. There had been too much magic in the past few days for Arthur to ignore any suspicious sounds. He wanted to ask around but something told him that the kids didn’t know what they were doing when it came to the sync chambers. So Arthur just turned towards his husband, watching him read. 

A pair of pirates came out of nowhere and knocked Franz’s chair over in their haste, sending him bookfirst into the deck with a loud screech.

“WHAT WAS THAT???” Arthur shouted. “Franz, are you alright?” 

“When am I ever alright?” he replied, still lying face-down on the deck. 

“Don’t do this now, dear.” 

Franz sat up and smoothed out his hair while Arthur squinted at where the pirates, following their path around the deck. The duo had leapt over a twisted piece of metal embedded into the floorboards and crouched behind it. Arthur’s eyes darted towards more people running downstairs, into glass doors, towards staircases leading up to the empty VIP balcony. A few brave souls were leaning against the railing and watching something behind Arthur. 

“Where is everyone going?” Franz said. He was almost angry at being interrupted in the middle of his book. “I can’t stand the fuss we’re having this we-”

“ARTHUR,” a voice boomed. Arthur winced and reflexively covered his ears before turning around. Lutetia, eyes and arms and all, standing by the pool, hair and dress billowing in the breeze. They smiled before crouching to swish their hands in the water. Arthur did a double take, but no, he was really seeing that uniform again, melded into an elegant gown draped over an impossibly tall frame. 

“You’re.....” he mumbled.

“Your majesty!” Franz said. He ran up to Lutetia with a huge grin on his face. “A pleasure to meet you. I assume that the scientists have seen this already.”

“Indeed. My business with them is done.”

“So now what are you up to?” Arthur asked, gently pulling his husband away by the arm. Franz planted himself firmly on the ground and whispered something about talking up rather than down for once. Amusement flickered across Lutetia’s face.

“What am I up to? Why, we’re on vacation, Arthur.”

“And how long are you going to do that?” 

Lutetia threw their head back and laughed so loudly that a few pirates immediately scurried out of their hiding places.

“Hey, what happened to your clothes?” they asked. 

Arthur and Franz were taken aback by the bluntness of the question. 

“We were sunbathing together,” Franz said. “You know, soaking up the rays? Arthur, is that how you say it in English?”

“Yes it is, dear.”

Lutetia’s grin widened. “Please! Shouldn’t you two be happier apart?”

“Don’t say things like that on my honeymoon.” Arthur said. He was growing sick of that word, honeymoon. Franz was standing behind Arthur and silently reminding him what it meant.

“Why would you think that?!” Franz suddenly asked. Lutetia stared at him for a few seconds.

(Napoleon, why don’t we leave them alone and go up to the balconies? We could climb our way up!) Josephine thought. Napoleon’s gears had been running nonstop for the past half hour and Josephine was a bit too tired to converse. But she could reach out to her husband.

(I really don’t want to do this to Franz,) she continued. (Arthur is a completely different story. But right now it wouldn’t be sensible to get him involved in our old affairs.)

(How?) Napoleon thought. True, you were talking to him for a while back in the lab....he almost said. Something told him that there was nothing wrong. Napoleon quieted down and gave Josephine something that would have been a glare if they were separate.

Lutetia took a deep breath and winked at the two men.

(What was that???) Napoleon and Josephine asked each other, simultaneously. 

“What was that?” Franz asked. He blinked in the sun and cautiously circled Lutetia, whose gaze followed him all the way around. Franz cleared his throat and wandered off at a (hopefully) casual pace.

“I hope he doesn’t get lost.” Lutetia said. “I’ll see you two at dinner.” 

Arthur couldn’t fit a word in edgewise before Lutetia grinned at the sparkling pool and jumped in with a tremendous splash. He grimaced at the dark patch of wood blossoming under his feet. It would take a lot more than a little water to ruffle someone like him. Arthur spotted his husband in the distance and followed him away from Lutetia.  
____

The next time everyone gathered, it was around the dinner table. This time it was a proper seating arrangement, with Ching at the head of the table and the hooded figures sitting on either side of her. Ten minutes into the meal, Rosalind and Ada were forced to move to one end and make space for Lutetia’s opulent enormity. On the other side, Franz and Arthur were dressed sharply. Arthur regarded Lutetia quietly and whispered something to Franz, who sighed weakly and quickly smiled. The couple excused themselves and then came back as George, who sat down in one chair and casually tossed the other into a corner. 

(Say, Ros, have you found anything interesting from the blood you took yesterday?) Lutetia asked.

(Absolutely. I won’t bore you with the details, but there’s no doubt that our....these samples behave differently from normal tissue.)

“What are they saying?” Franz whispered.

“I’m not sure.” Arthur replied. This was utterly bizarre for him. What should have been intelligible French was now coming through in fragments surrounded by static. Static? This is how Franz hears everything?

“I don’t think George can understand French.” Arthur said.  
“We can’t do it!”  
George’s head was spinning. He started playing with his fork and tried to focus on something nice. 

(If we’re going to Shanghai, will we be returning to California by sea?) Lutetia asked.

(No,) Rosalind sighed. (I don’t think we have enough blood to open a portal back.)

(All of these pirates aren’t enough?) Ada said. She cleared her throat and glanced at the kids sitting across from her. They were whispering incessantly while Jen casually slid some of her potatoes onto George’s plate. He stared at her with something resembling betrayal all over his face.

“What? You’re eating for two!” Jen whispered.

George nodded slowly.

“She’s right, actually.” Franz murmured. It was the only phrase cutting through the fog swirling in George’s head. George opened his mouth and words would not come out.

“Better to shut up.” Arthur thought. He wanted to let go of Franz and deal with the embarrassment alone, but resolved not to fall apart in front of the French. It would simply be unacceptable for Arthur, of all people.

“I don’t think he’s hungry,” Jo said, tugging on Jen’s cloak. Rosalind and Ching exchanged looks. 

“How kind of you to share your meal!” Lutetia boomed. The hooded figures froze.

“Well, yeah, we’ve got a big day ahead of us tomorrow!” Jen said, with an unconvincing thumbs-up. “Gotta....stay hydrated....”

Lutetia laughed and rested their cheek on their hands. The single gray eye they were covering blinked rapidly for a few moments before readjusting to the pressure.

“If there’s anything I can do to help you and Rose,”

“Ros.”

“My bad. If there’s anything I could do to help you and Ros, please let me know. I have an interest in sorcery.”

Jen and Jo nodded and tried to focus on eating. They may have been rogue magical children, but they were children after all, and they could sense that everyone was uneasy and in pain. It was a sort of pain that was impossible to understand for a human but it was leaking out nonetheless. It was also hard to relax because of the two monstrously tall fusions sitting close to each other, one of which seemed to be ill.

Jo coughed and discreetly scooched their chair closer to Ching’s seat.

“You wanna go for it now?” they asked.

“Go for what?” 

“Tell them what we’re doing tomorrow. We didn’t hide in the operating room all afternoon for nothing.”  
The dinner party had grown tense and sharp, but Ching hadn’t considered the idea of just leaving. She had lived a lifetime of rough, unregulated meals where eating rather than chatting was the main attraction. The tension of a meal that expected a lot out of everyone was foreign and fascinating. Ching rubbed her temples and decided there would be no sense waking up the whole ship at dawn and then wasting time preparing. She cleared her throat, but Jen tapped her shoulder and frowned at the fusions.

“What now? Didn’t you want me to talk about the plan?”

“That was Jo, not me.”

“How am I supposed to know?! Your faces are completely-“

“No, no, just….” Jen took a deep breath and clasped her hands together. “I don’t think everyone’s listening.”  
Ching took a closer look at her passengers. Holding a fork seemed like a very strenuous activity for Lutetia, but it couldn’t keep their spirits down. George was gray-faced, sitting with his head resting on one shoulder and all four arms hanging listlessly from his sides.

“We got it.” Jo said. “Haha, would you look at the time!”

“It’s….seven o’ clock.” Ada said. “I am not having another day of early lights-out.”

“That’s…ok. When did y’all get up this morning?”

Ada and Rosalind woke up at around 9 or 10 and greatly appreciated not having to set an alarm for anything. Lutetia mumbled something like 6 AM in French so Jo decided to average that out between Napoleon and Josephine.

“What about you, George?”

He shivered violently and didn’t hear the question.

“Jo, what are you trying to get at?” Rosalind asked. “Just spit it out.”

“Tomorrow is the day we go to Shanghai!!!” Jo shouted, slamming their plate onto the table with frightening force. To their disappointment, it did not shatter dramatically. 

“You’ve got the blood already?” Ada asked. “And you drew all the runes and circles we need?”

Jo took a deep breath. “No! In the spirit of true procrastinators, which some of you are, we will do this....TOMORROW!” 

“Not like we can do anything now, after dark...” Ching muttered. 

Everyone at the table looked at each other and nudged their food around.

“Well, if the news report this morning is any indication, we really should get moving,” Rosalind said. “People are getting nervous about you, Ching!” 

“Ha! Good! They ought to be afraid of us!” Lutetia shouted. 

“This isn’t a good-”

“Oh, don’t give me that face. Be proud of what you’ve become! I wouldn’t worry about the media, eh? They think they’re so....”  
Lutetia shook their fist triumphantly and let their sentence trail off. Ching stared coolly into space and finished off her drink. She was the only member of the party that finished their dinner.

“We’ll be OK!” Jen said quietly. 

Ching raised an eyebrow.  
“How are you so sure?”

“We’re going through a portal in less than 2 days. Nobody can follow us into hyperspace.”

“Magicians!” Jo said. “Always got a trick up our sleeve.” They semi-discreetly pulled a queen of spades out of the cuff of their magician’s glove and held it up proudly.

“Niceee.” Jen whispered. Jo nodded and threw the card across the table with a flick of their wrist. It clipped against George’s forehead and landed in a glass of water. 

That must have been the final straw, because George suddenly stood up and slammed all four of his hands down on the table. Rosalind immediately reached behind Ada’s chair and pulled it back a few feet before scooting herself away as well. Ada immediately decided not to question it. 

“George!” Jo cried. “Oh my god, I’m sorry, I thought it would just be a cool trick I didn’t-”

“No, no, it’s m-my fault, not you. What are you doing? Hey, stop it, I’m falling apart! NO! I’m sorry! I can’t do it! It’s my fault!”

George’s face relaxed and he dissipated into two lumps of light that fell to the ground with a tremendous crash. Arthur sat up immediately. 

Ada’s jaw dropped. 

“Your Grace, was that....are you alright?”

Arthur was too busy alternating his glares between Lutetia and Franz to respond. Franz pulled himself onto a chair and tried to smooth down his hair. Lutetia shrugged and started picking up the cold plates around them. Rosalind silently pointed towards the kitchen. Lutetia curtsied slightly before leaving. They did not look back before leaving.

The hooded figures glanced at each other nervously before hunching over and retreating to their phones. Jen gasped under her hood and nudged Jo, sparking a heated whispering match. Ching sighed and patted them on the shoulders.

“Let’s call it a night.” Franz said.  
____

Ajit had no issues when trying to goof off on the Internet at work. He had his own office, with one wall of floor-to-ceiling plate glass and three walls decorated with vintage movie posters and a glossy framed photo of his silver Lamborghini, with “#47” on the hood in black paint. Outside, Ajit had an expansive, glittering view of West Hollywood. Nobody ever commented on it when they came in to drop off lunch or complain about the latest episode's gags. They never noticed Ajit's monitors ether. He was constantly goofing off on social media, much to the amusement of his fans. Even if someone caught him, firing Ajit would spell the end for everyone on board this show. 

The other half of the NA Show had his office right next door. Nathan's office was decorated with any art that he found interesting and no regard to aesthetics or convenience of movement in his workspace. It worked out fine because he didn't spend much time in there. At the moment Ajit was alone in this particular stretch of hallway. He wondered if Nathan was actually doing something or if he had gone home for the day. After all, it wasn't like him to work so late on a Thursday night. Ajit sighed and spun around in his chair a few times. He dragged his feet on the ground, bringing him to a grinding halt before his monitor. 15 tabs open (3 chat windows with Nathan) and not a single new message. Ajit thought it was a drag to stay on top of so many accounts, professional and personal. But hey, that's the price of fame. 

He squinted at his desk clock. 10 PM. That scintillating group chat with the witchy bloggers showed no sign of reviving. Ajit was a little bit completely exhausted. He yawned, spun around in his chair again, and wondered who else was still in the building. 

“Goddammit, Nathan....” 

Ajit picked himself up and walked out of his office.

On late nights like this, most of the staff were gone. The lights were half-dimmed for the stragglers and the power was kept on, giving the building the feel of an enormous birdcage covered with a loosely woven blanket. The only part of headquarters that were at full steam was the power plant. Somehow, in some way, Nathan managed to purchase a huge slice of the Santa Monica mountains and constructed a nuclear power plant inside the layers of dirt and stone. The plant was isolated from the main building, connected with narrow hallways and cables that ennervated the entire building, powering lights and fueling the batteries being used for all manner of experiments. Ajit stepped into an elevator and flew down.

The heavy iron doors opened into a bright, sterile hallway that ended in a series of security gates. Ajit blew through them with his driver’s license and stepped into the central control chamber of the power plant. The dimmed lights hid the true size of the ceiling, though the large ring of illuminated office space around the elevator column kept all paths highly visible. The largest glass box of an office sat next to the entrance. It was a Spartan workspace with no personal traces besides a black-and-white photo of a mustachioed man and a brass plaque over the door that read “Dr. Marie S. Curie, Plant Manager”.

Ajit walked in without knocking and gently shook Marie awake. She lifted her face off a clipboard and shakily reached for her coffee mug.

“Good evening, Ajit,” Marie mumbled. She took a sip of coffee and hit a key on her monitor, making it flicker to life. Her browser was open to a headline aggregator. The news tickers on the bottom of the page gave her a strange confidence with modern life.

“Would you look at that. The ship’s still missing.”

“Mhmm. Nathan won’t shut up about it. Even when we’re on air, he’ll always slip something in about pirates or whatever it was that took it. I think it was just a bad storm but hey, ratings.”

Marie rubbed her eyes and nodded slowly.

“Overtime hours for the fourth time this week. Come on, Marie, you don’t have to do this to yourself-”

“I get paid triple.”

“Aren’t you doing pretty well money-wise?”

“Of course, I’m just saving up for something special.” A smile crept onto Marie’s face and her eyes crinkled. “I’ve been thinking about taking time off, going to France.”

“Really?” Ajit didn’t expect this much sentimentality from Marie. The only hint that she wasn’t a typical 50-year old woman was the old photo on her desk. Everything else, from her hairstyle to the way she commanded the power plant, was utterly modern. She rarely spoke of the past. In this respect, she was an unusual Rifted. 

“Hey, you deserve the break. After we get the summer season over with Nathan will let up on the workload-”

“And maybe you’ll work less than half an hour a day.”

Ajit was going to be offended, but the white glow of bandages caught his eye. Marie’s left hand was completely wrapped up.

“Holy crap, did that happen near the fuel rods-”

“This?” Marie rolled up her sleeve, showing the bandages going up to her elbow. “They’re running the final round of tests on the new resonance gates. They needed a Rifted.”

Ajit grimaced. Marie shrugged and covered the bandages with her sleeve again.

“At least there’s a bright side. Now we know these gates pack a hell of a punch.”

“They do.”

Ajit stretched and looked at his watch. 

“I’ll be going now. Take care, get some fresh air! It can’t be healthy, being holed up in the mountain like this.”

Marie’s expression was stony. “You’re too kind, Ajit. See you tomorrow.”

When Ajit got into his car, he rolled down the top and took a good look at headquarters. The building resembled a tall concrete pillar with a spire of glass that formed the top 10 floors. On each of the four corners were smaller towers with balconies and unidentified cloth-covered projections coming out of the tops. At the moment, the windows were just dark pits in the building’s facade. Ajit raised his eyes toward a row of glass panels and counted one, two, three panels down from the corner. The fourth panel was illuminated. Ajit started the engine and squinted at Nathan’s tiny silhouette pacing in the square of light. 

Whatever, Ajit thought as he pulled out of the parking lot. I’m too tired to deal with this....  
___

“Hi?” 

Arthur stopped in his tracks and turned around. The hooded figures waved at him in the fading dusk. 

“What’s the matter? Why are you out here this late?”

“Why are you out?” Jen asked. “We’re out here for a real reason. Better wifi.”

Arthur motioned for the hooded figures to join him by the railing. The warm wind ruffled his hair as he watched sea pass by. It was very quiet.

“Did you want to talk or something?” Jo finally said.

“You saw what happened at dinner. God, I can’t believe that I actually did that. What was I thinking? Magic isn’t a toy. I don’t even know if Franz is alright. He wouldn’t talk to me afterwards.” Arthur leaned on the railing and sighed. The hooded figures gave each other a look. They intuitively knew that something bigger was bothering him but were afraid to press further. For the moment, at least.

“Does Napoleon remind you of before you got rifted?” Jen said, tilting her head up towards Arthur.

His eyes widened.

If Jen could only keep one virtue, it would be the courage that bordered on idiocy. It got things done. 

Arthur rubbed the bridge of his nose and avoided Jen’s gaze. 

“You know everything about me, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. I’ve had two years to prepare for this reunion.”

“Jen, what the hell-” Jo whispered. 

Jen shushed them with a tug on their sleeve. Arthur was having a hard time with time. The nerve of these magicians, no, children, the very people who thrust him into this predicament in the first place! His mind was reeling backwards now, back to the first meeting with Napoleon, back to the day he was summoned, further back to London, to Waterloo...the weight of four dark eyes in the summer night was suffocating him.

“You grew up here. Even if you were my age, you couldn’t understand what 200 years are like.”

“I’m not here to tell you what to think.” Jen said.

“Then what do you want?!” Arthur shouted. “You, and the other one, Napoleon, the scientists, you’ve been tormenting me on my vacation for long enough. Don’t you remember the plan? All we have to do is get to Shanghai and then everyone can go their merry way. I don’t see how Franz and I are remotely necessary to do that.”

“This wasn’t my plan, it was Ada’s! Jo and I just want to talk. We’re worried about you.”

“Oh, great! That certainly makes up for the humiliating, violating experiments, and the pirate attack, and above all of this nonsense with the Bonapartes!”

“EXACTLY!” Jen shouted. “That’s the problem! You can’t stop thinking about them!”

“Come on!” Jo said. “From my observations Franz is taking this pretty well, so you will definitely be fine.”

“Don’t...don’t compare me to him.” Arthur said in a strangely soft voice. “He’s not a part of my time.”

“All I’m saying is that the past is bugging you and that’s how it is, whether you like it or not. You can deal with it. Or not.”

Arthur stood up straight and crossed his arms. He looked up the stars.

“Two hundred years,” he whispered.  
____

The hooded figures shuffled towards their room, trying to put something sensible together in their heads. Jo took a wrong turn by the elevators but Jen didn’t feel like pointing it out. She relaxed once Jo stopped in front of Franz and Arthur’s room. They knocked on the door, waited the socially acceptable 20 seconds, and knocked again. No response. 

“Do you think Franz is here?”

“Worth a try.” Jo jiggled the handle, found that it was unlocked, and pushed the door open. 

Franz was fast asleep, curled up on the bed with a book lying beside him. He was evidently too tired to change out of his suit but awake enough to set his shoes by a neat row of luggage. 

“He seems fine.” Jo said. Jen wanted to protest but decided to just leave it to morning. If something was wrong, he could just sleep it off. The hooded figures retreated into the halls. 

“What were you even trying to do?” Jo asked. “Like, yeah, Arthur’s being a dumbass, but you don’t have to tell him.”

“It just worries me! He’s making a fool of himself and stressing Ros out and he has to deal with this sooner or later, so I’d rather have it be sooner than later.”

“I don’t think the past is the problem. Alone, at least.”

Jen frowned. “How?”

“I think it’s modern life, in general. He hasn’t quite accepted it.” Jo said. “I mean, it’s not fun meeting your ex again, and thinking about the war, and all of your dead friends...” They were lost for words. Jen got the point anyways and nodded.

“Hey!”

The hooded figures froze as Napoleon waved at them before rushing down the hall to give them a big hug. 

“What?” Jo sputtered.

“Haha! I was looking for you two. Josephine wanted to say thanks for getting started on the portal. Did Lutetia tell you already?”

“......no?”

Jen contemplated asking him what the matter was, but the lightness of his mood was too welcome to shatter. She half-assed a grin and wriggled out of Napoleon’s arms. He was a bit puzzled.

“Why the long faces? Aren’t you excited for tomorrow?”

“We’re worried about the Duke,” Jo sighed.

“Arturo? He doesn’t need pity! Where is he right now?”

“Brooding outside.” Jen said.

“And his husband?”

“Sleeping like a baby.”

Napoleon did a double take.

“Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”

Jen shrugged. “Guess he’s just really tired, dude.”

Napoleon patted both kids on the head. “You need sleep too!” he said. “I’ll see you at dawn.”

Jen and Jo stood in the hall, watching Napoleon walk off while muttering about “dude”. They eventually went to bed at the reasonable hour of 12 AM.

“Do you think he’s serious about getting up that early?” Jo whispered from across the room.

“I hope not,” Jen replied. “I’m tired of this.”


	13. All On the Line

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The day of reckoning has arrived: it's up to the hooded figures to get everyone to Shanghai in one piece!

Preparations began at dawn.

A deep, bellowing horn resounded throughout the whole battered ship, immediately rousing the pirates. The others were not so quick to follow. Ching, of course, was the first on deck, fully dressed and looking none too fatigued. Ada followed soon after, having spent the better part of four in the morning on her laptop trying to distract herself from...someone. The others soon emerged from their rooms, sleepy-eyed and hungry. The hooded figures each pulled in boxes and potato sacks with the equipment necessary for the first phase of preparations: gathering blood.

Jen and Jo, with Ching's blessing--and strongly worded warnings to not misuse the pirate grunts--had redirected the workers on a quick scavenger hunt the night before. Each were given different objectives, ranging from wide brushes to clean knives, ropes to harnesses, small buckets to bilge rats. That last one proved impossible to find, thanks to Mudkip having gotten to them first.

Now, there was the small matter of collecting blood from everyone; they needed about four human sacrifices' worth of blood, which is about 6 gallons give or take. Luckily, those two teenagers study blood magic. Math done, divided amongst a crew of sixty (including those on Ching's original ship), plus the seven Rifteds and two hooded figures.... 

"Let's see," Jo checked their papers. "That's a bit less than 1.5 cups each, making a bit over six gallons with a little room for error. A person's body can lose way more than that without dying, but they'd get pretty close." 

Jen replied with a pinched grimace. "It's gonna smell weird, though. Stale blood smells like a run-down hospice to me sometimes."

Ching nodded at both of them. Then, she turned to her crew and bellowed. "Everyone! Get into four lines! We're pulling a pint of blood from all of you. It won't kill you, but you might get dizzy, so food is on the other side of this deck." She gestured past the IV setups to the long table behind her, which had a boiling pot of suspicious gruel, piles of vegetables, and stacks of bowls. "I want this done in two hours." Which she knew was a stretch, but hey, shit had to be done.

"Hey, I thought we were running out of food?" Jen asked Ching.

"I had some of my guys harvest some grub from the boiler room." Ah yes, the boiler room, now temporarily an unofficial forest due to magical fallout. 

"Anything weird happen?"

"Well, I haven't died yet." 

Ching always let her crew know that she wouldn't make them do something she couldn't do for herself. And she was the same with the current situation. She pulled up her sleeve and motioned for the hooded figures to draw her blood. 

Some of the pirates were a little green in the face, murmuring to each other in a low buzz. The crew were willing, but not eager, to follow their captain on this line of bloodshed. Apparently, dying of scurvy, gunshot, or plain ol' sword-to-the-gut is fine and dandy, but bloodsucking needles are suspicious and creepy. One suggested they do it the "old-fashioned way" by sacrificing four entire people instead, uneasily joking about how they could have kept some of the passengers for this purpose. 

"Grow up!" Ching snapped at her crew. They hushed silent and wide-eyed. Ching glared at them without flinching as the needle broke skin. The crew was thus properly chastised.

"There it goes," Jen said as she watched the blood crawl through the tube. "The crimson metallic-tasting life fluid."

"I'm surprised that only took you one try." Ros said.

"We're kinda used to this," Jo said. "Magic practitioners at our level have to meet a certain set of standards, certifications, et cetera." Then an afterthought: "That's not to say we have those certificates, but we uh, we manage." A dubious tone entered their voice.

The horizon was just a sliver of pink, and the sky itself was a drowsy dark blue. The wind was chilly and heavy on the group, forcing them to gather in a huddle. Franz watched as Napoleon, bouncing on his feet, held Josephine's hands and rubbed them to keep warm. Arthur approached the couple. Franz overheard the first part of the conversation.

"My actions yesterday were unsightly. I apologize." Arthur bowed to Josephine. Meanwhile, the Bonapartes shared a discreet look, one of mild surprise and confusion.

Napoleon, surprisingly, did not challenge this turn of events, possibly because Josephine held him in check. "Ah, well," he waved a hand. "We all experience that mauvais quart d'heure once in a while."

Josephine added, "The past few days have been rough on us all."

"Right." Arthur's hands were crossed behind his back. A brief silence stretched between the three of them, but Arthur made no move to either continue or leave the conversation. Napoleon was just as content with standing there with a neutral expression. 

The wind howled for a moment, making the rest of the staring contest difficult to hear, so Franz turned his attention to something else. He thought briefly about last night's dinner, how tired he had been afterward. Arthur came back in the room long after he had fallen asleep. Neither of them have brought it up yet; Franz happened to wake up and climb to the deck earlier than Arthur, though he wasn't avoiding his husband on purpose. Still, it was probably best not to make things worse-

Arthur abruptly patted Franz on the shoulder and brought him out of his spiraling thoughts. "Faring well?" Arthur asked him.

Franz furrowed his eyebrows and nodded slowly. Arthur seemed satisfied with this answer, squeezing Franz's shoulders and giving him two solid pats.

Ada and Rosalind were checking the IV setups, their heads bowed and shoulders touching, but Ada's posture showed a wariness that Rosalind hoped was just lack of sleep.

Rosalind, Ada, Jen, and Jo manned the machines as they made quick process on the blood work. As expected, there was quite a bit of apprehension and squirming from the Rifteds, unfamiliar with needles. Franz had to be blindfolded with his tie before he would let the needle slip into his arm. But Rosalind never lost her focus. Or at least, she tried . Her eyes kept wandering to one side, snatching brief glances at Ada. Rosalind was simply making sure that Ada was doing alright. After all, computers were a bit of a stretch away from phlebotomy. Yes, Ada is doing fine, Rosalind thought. Spectacularly, even. She could tell from the sharp focus in Ada's lovely eyes that--

"Eek!" 

The pirate in front of Rosalind gave a quick, soft yelp. The needle missed the vein. Unprofessional, Ros! Focus! Ada is doing just fine. Then, after a beat, her brain supplied, damn right she is. Rosalind apologized the the pirate and got back to work. No more glances!

Ada's brain was slightly more used to multitasking. She kept her eyes trained on the blood bag, gently rocking to prevent blood clots, while her brain thought back to yesterday. Close quarters have done a number on you, Ada. It's okay, everything's okay. Think of this whole situation like a league raid. You've got stuff to do. I wonder how Rosalind would draw my blood versus a stranger. No! Tasks! You. Have. Tasks! Focus on them. "I swear..." 

She remembered something that she said once, before she woke up to a new world. She found that, the more she saw of this era, the truer her own words seemed. Understand well as I may, my comprehension can only be an infinitesimal fraction of all I want to understand.

The blood collection took a little over two hours, and the kids were behind schedule by half an hour. They quickly chowed down their giant corn and hot gruel, then rushed to paint runes over everything, carrying two bags of blood at a time, leaving the others at the breakfast table. 

"Be careful!" Ada called out to them as she took her seat next to Rosalind by the railing. 

The kids tied makeshift rappelling equipment to their waists and climbed over the railings, making sure to stay well above the waterline. They only had just enough blood, and they couldn't afford them getting washed off before they can start. By this time, the sky and the water were both blue and gold and dazzling to the eyes, but it was nothing compared to the electric blue glow that pulsed from the sigils as they were completed. Some pirates leaned over to watch, but Ching quickly barked at them to get back to work. They had their own parts to play in preparing the ship, like taking down the long table and tying down loose furniture. Whatever happened to the helicopter wreck, happened. Meanwhile, the kids split to make one large sigil each on port and starboard sides, then reunited at the stern. 

 

"Captain, we should send everybody inside before this next step,” Jen told Ching, with other people’s blood smudged on her fingers. “The lines can be dangerous. It'll be bursting with enough energy to teleport an entire cruise ship, and if someone not wearing insulating robes stepped on them, all that energy will be conducted into one small human..."

"And boom," Jo, bloody in a similar fashion, finished the sentence by spreading their fingers in a mimicry of explosion. 

Briefly, Ching thought how creepy these two looked in matching clothes and bloody hands, like twins from a horror movie.

Ching nodded. "Cover your ears." The hooded figures silently obeyed; Ching brought her fingers to her mouth and whistled once, twice, long shrill notes, and the crew all stopped in their tracks. "Wrap it up! Back belowdecks, everyone!" There was a quick chorus of "aye!" before the crew shuffled double-time to send everyone in.

With everyone out of the way, the kids drew thick lines of blood to connect those four corners to all the upper levels of the ship. After that, they were down to the last bag of blood and on the highest deck. The ship reeked of summer homes and slaughterhouses. The last step was to connect the highest point of the ship to the lines. In front of them was the radio antenna, a little worse for wear but still the highest point. Jo craned their neck up, squinting. "How much time do we have left?"

Jen said, "About nine minutes." Twenty-five feet seemed like a mountain now. "We need more." 

The radio antenna was mounted on a wide metal column with only two indentations around the perimeter, four feet apart, from the ground, and there were no ladders to climb it. This column ended at fifteen feet, and the remaining ten-or-so feet was comprised of the antenna itself, which was smooth on the sides, with not another way to climb than to shimmy up.

"How are we gonna get to the top?"

"We could use some of this blood to get up there."

"We won't have enough for the sigils."

"Should we use our own blood?"

"Ehhhh.....” Jen rubbed her arms. “Both of us have to paint the coordinates, and twenty-five feet is kind of a lot, and you know how I am...” 

Jo nodded silently. Anemia sucked, but it really sucked when you were a magician. Usually the hooded figures could make up for it by working together but when push comes to shove magic was the strongest force in play here. Anywhere, really.

"What's the problem?" Ching asked. The kids explained their dilemma, but all this deliberation took time so that they only had eight minutes. Ching thought this over for only a moment.   
"I'll go get some of the others. Maybe they could fuse and help you climb up."

Ching moved away and returned a minute later with all the other rifteds. Napoleon and Josephine were at the forefront, being the ones deemed most suitable and willing for fusion at the moment.

"All we have to do is climb that, non?" Napoleon said.

"Well, climb up while carrying the two of us." Jo said.

"That won't be a problem." Napoleon smiled smugly and pulled Josephine in for a twirl. Josephine let him. In a flash, Lutetia appeared in their long, gauzy dress. They knelt down to let the hooded figures climb on their arms. The hooded figures held onto Lutetia's neck as the fusion braced the column with a foot wedged into the lower indentation and their fingers on the higher one. They pushed with the other foot as if to climb.

At first, they had little success. The long dress impeded Lutetia, preventing flexibility and causing them to constantly slip down the column. The silk gloves certainly didn't help. "Oh, hold on a moment here..." The kids wobbled in Lutetia's arms. Lutetia readjusted their foot and tried again.

Then they were met with even less success. Lutetia's other foot hit the foothold, but the dress got caught in the gap and they slipped. Lutetia lost their grip on the column and with a shout of surprise, fell hard on their behind.

"Oof!" All three landed with an unceremonious thud. Everyone rushed to their side. 

"Are you all okay?" Ros knelt down and checked the kids for head trauma, broken bones, injuries. Ada checked on Lutetia, who only gave a soft wheeze before unfusing. Napoleon rolled to his side and heard ringing in his ears, while Josephine on his left clutched her head and squeezed her eyes shut. 

"Peachy." Jen sat up and grimaced, looking at her timer. Jo felt the first signs of ugly but possibly #aesthetic bruises beginning. "Six minutes."

"We don't have much time," Ching said, bringing everyone's attention back to the current mission. "Can you two fuse again?" 

Josephine shook her head gingerly. Napoleon was about to protest, but she let out a cry of pain that shut him up.

"Alright then. You two--" Ching motioned for Franz and Arthur. "Your turn." At this the children protested, remembering last night's events.

"They really shouldn't--"

"It's probably not the best time--"

Ching was confused with their complaints. "Why not?"

Ros, sensing the kids’ discomfort, was the one to find a suitable excuse. "They've fused and unfused for a few days in a row now; their bodies might not be able to handle that much change."

Ada covered for her. "We haven't gotten that far in the testing yet. We don't know the physical or mental effects that this might have."

"Then why don't you two fuse?" Ching asked. "You're Rifteds as well, aren't you?"

Ros blinked rapidly and her mouth hung slightly open, but she had a difficult time with the words. "W-well, we don't...we're not...uh." Her eyes darted to Ada's in search for answers.

"Sync exercises are...Well, we've never done the sync exercises between us. Fusion would likely be impossible."

"Then how are we going to finish this ritual?"

"I'd be happy to help." Franz spoke up, and a second silence hit them.

Everyone turned to Franz, who didn't flinch at the attention. Arthur was for the most part a calm observer until this point, but even this surprised him. "Are you sure?"

"Of course. Why not?" He replied with a shrug.

"Um, well, shouldn't you be resting? All this fusing in a short period of time could be pushing your limit." Jo said. They lowered their voice. “Can you handle George right now?”

"Oh, I'm fine. This wouldn't bother me." Franz waved off their concern. Truth be told, he knew this wouldn’t be a very wholesome experience, but something had to be done. I should be able to do this if I want to fight PIRCH, he thought. If I want to help then I must give whatever it takes.

"Are you sure?" Arthur asked again. Franz silently held his hand out to start the dance.

Four minutes left. The sparks were a now constantly dancing low on the deck. The blood gave off the sharp scent of ozone.

Jen sighed. "I don't like this, but we don't exactly have a choice."

"Ready?" Arthur accepted reluctantly and started the dance. Their motions were well-practiced and familiar. Franz dipped Arthur right before the white light enveloped them both. In a flash, George stood at the spot; he wasn't blurring around the edges like he sometimes would when the fusion became unstable. He knelt down, waiting for the hooded figures to climb his shoulders.

The hooded figures hesitated for only a second before they both climbed on George's shoulders, nervously clinging to his shoulders. He used all four arms to grab the upper edge of the column. One polished boot wedged into the foothold, and George pushed himself up so that he was now four feet off the deck. This sudden push jostled the kids and almost sent them sliding off his back; they shrieked in brief terror, but George caught them both before they passed his waist with surprising dexterity. George pushed them back up to their perch on his shoulders in a seemingly impossible maneuver. 

"Is...is he boneless?" Napoleon squinted from behind George. "Rosalind, how are his bones not breaking?"

“How are we doing this? Are we boneless?” Arthur thought.

“Who cares?” was Franz’s reply. 

"I...don't know?" Rosalind said. George swung a leg to get his foot on top of the column. Again, the kids slipped off the shoulders, but this time around they were less fearful. George's hands caught them again and returned them to his shoulders without effort from reaching so high. Ros was suspicious at this gymnastic flexibility. 

George managed to swing the right side of his body onto the flat top of the column. For the third time in under a minute, the kids slid off, but again George caught them, this time with his left hands only three feet off the ground. 

"That's anatomically incorrect." Rosalind looked at the length of George's arms, closing one eye and lining up her pen with George’s proportions. She was suspicious before, but she was almost certain now; as gangly as George may be, his arms should not be that long unless there was something they hadn't accounted for. And his components certainly could not do this when separated.

The hooded figures laughed and hooted as they bounced up and down the column like they were on bungee cords. Those standing below them failed to see the humor in this. 

"For goodness' sake, just hold them!" Ching yelled, almost sounding concerned for the two.

George stood on top of the column now. He grabbed the two kids by their waists and held them as high as he could to either side of the antenna, but even with him precariously attached like an insect and with the hooded figures using long brushes, there was still a foot of antenna at the top that was simply impossible to cover.

George called down to the others. “I can't reach!”

Ching called back up. "Sucks to be you!" 

George sighed and felt himself sway with the ocean winds. There was also a growth, like a bubbly hum in all of his joints and interlaced with his muscles. He didn't try to stop it, letting it pass the same as before, and he could see his limbs warp and contract minute to minute. Somehow it didn’t disgust him. 

Finally, finally, the hooded figures were able to finish setting the sigils. They punctuated it with a pinprick of the thumb and placing their bloodied fingerprint right below the writing.

Jen tapped George's hand. "We're done! Everyone back inside, fast!" The other rifteds dashed to the swinging door a distance away, hopping over the now-steaming blood. The ship groaned as the magic started to wash over the metal. 

Thirty seconds. Blue flames jumped off of the lines, nearly igniting several of the Rifteds’ dresses. George, still fifteen feet off the ground, knelt and set the hooded figures on the deck. George sat on the edge and pushed himself off the column, landing with a deck-cracking thud. The others lost balance and just barely fell past the threshold. 

Fifteen seconds. The two kids were halfway to the door, with George ahead of them, but the ship tilted to one side, causing Jo to stumble over their robe. 

Ten seconds. Jen stopped and went back to help Jo when the ship tilted the other way. George turned too and reached them in five strides, picked them up.

Five seconds. George stretched his arms and dropped them at the door.

Four. “I'm too tall to fit!”

Three. "Dive!"

Two. George nosedived, flashed blinding white, and unfused into Franz and Arthur.

One. The two men skidded a few feet. Jen grabbed the door's edge and slammed it shut.

Zero.

The generators died and it was dark. 

Arthur craned his neck from his position on the floor. "What was the rush? Nothing's hap--" A flash of blue seeped through the cracks, so strong that it lit up the hallway brightly with only slivers of light, followed immediately by the loud buzz of a million live wires. Air left the narrow passage. Everyone's ears popped at the sudden drop in pressure. The ship stuttered and threatened to buckle. The buzz rose to a keening wail. The blue lights clicked to black like a switch was flipped. Black. Red. Black. Gold. Then a million different colors.

And then there was silence. 

“That’s it, everyone. We made the jump into hyperspace.” Jen said. “One hell of a ride.”

Ching looked around in disbelief at the stunned, almost statue-like figures of the Rifteds standing in the hall. 

“Everybody. Dining room.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you visualized the jump into hyperspace like the way it happens in Star Wars because that's what's happening here


	14. No Signal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jen, Jo, and the Rifteds take shelter belowdecks on their way to Shanghai.

“Alright, we’re ready now. Can’t go above decks, but everything else is safe.”  
Ching squinted at the huge chandelier glittering above her. The other Rifteds were arranging scattered chairs and tables into something less chaotic.  
“How long are we going to be in here?” Ching asked.  
“Shanghai is a week away by normal ship so we need...” Jo alternated between counting on their fingers and air math. “We’ll be in here for around 18 hours. 20, just to be safe.”  
Ada groaned and rubbed her temples. “We’re going to spend a day and a night in here.”  
“Yes.”  
“With no Internet. Or sunlight.”  
“Yes.”  
“Are you telling me that I can’t contact my other ships?!” Ching shouted. “You went through all that trouble to paint the radio tower and it still won’t work?”  
“Yes! No!” Jen said. “I mean, radios can’t work in hyperspace, but all of the other ships are with us, so we should be fine...”  
Arthur and Napoleon had been trying to avoid eye contact, but now they gave each other an uneasy look. It was obvious that these hooded children had no business commanding a navy. But then again, it’s not like they had any business commanding the forces of magic to go to China.  
“Look, we already set up the circles as best we could and cast the spells. If something went wrong, there’s nothing we can do and we’ll just deal with it tomorrow.”  
Ada sighed. “Alright. At least everyone on this ship is accounted for. There’s seven of us, not counting the crew.”  
“Nine,” Arthur said.  
“Hey, that’s enough for a nice get-together,” Jen stammered. “We can pass the time by hanging out?”  
The Rifteds shifted in their seats and did not speak a word.  
____

Ten minutes later, the hooded figures were miserably yet carefully peeling potatoes in the kitchen. Ching poured herself another glass of beer as she watched them work.  
“I don’t want to waste these,” Jo said, on the verge of tears. For them, Mudkip swallowing the odd potato did not count as proper consumption.  
“Yeah? Do you have anything better to do?” Ching said. “Count the uh, count your blessings. Be glad I’m not making you wash rice. Hurry up, I don’t want to see this lot when they’re hungry.”  
Ching walked out of the kitchen. Jo threw down their knife and started crying.  
“Come on, it’ll be fine,” Jen said. “Who cares about the potatoes, anyways? It’s kind of relaxing to-”  
“I DO! This is stupid!” Jo pulled their hood over their face.”What are we doing? Ada’s right, the rift might not have worked and this ship could be barreling ahead to somewhere completely different and we’d be none the wiser.”  
“You heard me earlier, there’s nothing we can do about it right now. No point worrying about it. We can’t do anything in hyperspace.”  
“Are you sure?” Jo hissed.  
Jen tossed her potato aside in shock.  
“What if we get stuck in here and then there’s something magical that only we can deal with? We might have to spend a couple of days in here and rations are already low and we’re still wasting them right now!” After saying the fatal word “waste”, Jo started crying again. Jen cautiously reached to Jo and patted them on the back. Jen could never find the words to console them, but the least they could do about the anxiety was sympathize.  
Both kids froze when the kitchen door swung open. Franz put on an apron and seemed to be searching for something when his gaze landed on Jo.  
“Oh, what’s the matter?” he asked softly.  
“It’s the potatoes. We’ll die without the potatoes.”  
Franz cocked his head like a bird and frowned.  
“What they mean is, we’re not sure if the rift will work, and we might have to watch our rations,” Jen grumbled. “And Ching is making us sit here, peeling these fucking potatoes! Stupid waste of food.”  
“Language.” Franz picked up a few raw potatoes and set them on the counter.  
“Are you fucking kidding me, dude? We’re here, stressing out about getting you home, and you want to worry about-”  
“I don’t like it when people use words so loosely. Come, help me find a cutting board.”  
Jo wiped their eyes and started going past all the drawers, opening them one by one. Jen shrugged. At least they weren’t crying anymore. Franz had gathered some greens from the fridge and the growing pile of ingredients in front of him was piquing the kids’ curiosities. They hovered around the counter and slid spoons across the smooth resin.  
Franz went about his work somberly. As usual, he was deep in thought, though his thoughts about the past were rarely this melancholy. The smell of the food was taking him back to a happier time. No, it’s not just the food, he thought. It’s the voices of children, it’s the warmth of the summer, the way I felt when I saw such soft hands doing such bloody work...  
“Hey, I didn’t know you could cook,” Jo said.  
“I do it when I can. It’s healing. Simple, wholesome work with my hands. Could you get me some boiling water?”  
Franz’s thoughts turned back to the task at hand when he diced the vegetables. He let the rhythmic knocks of metal on wood ring through the kitchen. The hooded figures started whispering to each other and suddenly ran off, leaving Franz alone in the kitchen. Franz wondered if he had scared them off but breathed a sigh of relief. He could stop thinking about the past now.  
Why am I still sad? I’m not in Prague anymore.  
Franz decided that he was just tired. After all, he just gave a considerable amount of blood and the mere memory of the needle going under his arm was making him sick. It would have been easier to take if he wasn’t sore from the fusion. No, there was still something else sitting on his mind, a familiar lack that managed to make itself heavy. Franz mused on this further as he stirred the soup and came to a horrible conclusion.  
I’m free now, my ghosts cannot follow me here!  
It was true, no matter how many times Franz turned over his memories. Arthur’s distant gestures, his heartbeat racing in a fog of panic, Arthur and the Bonapartes huddled on one side of the deck as the wind blew apologies away. It hurt.  
Franz leaned over the stove more intently and took a deep breath. It would be alright, Franz told his reflection in the soup. The surface was suddenly disturbed by the fall of two tears.  
You weakling! Too terrified to be any use, per usual.  
Franz took a deep breath and laid the flat of his blade on a clove of garlic before slamming his fist on the metal. The noise sparked uneasy murmuring from the ballroom.  
________

Meanwhile, Ros and Ada were making best of the tables they pushed together. Ros was flipping through her notebooks with highlighters and a critical eye, while Ada was playing Minecraft. Josephine had retired somewhere with little fanfare. Neither Arthur nor Napoleon wanted to break their silence, so they found ways to occupy themselves.  
“Your Grace? Um...do you mind?” Ada half-closed her laptop and moved her shoulder away from Arthur’s face.  
“Oh, sorry. I’m just watching you play. Never seen something quite so...dimensional.”  
“Would you like to have a turn?”  
“No.”  
Ada tried to ignore Arthur’s eyes reflected in her screen.  
“You’ve been staring at Ada an awful lot these few days, Your Grace,” Ros said. “Is something wrong?”  
“It’s astonishing how she takes after her father. Did you know that? You’re Byron’s spitting image.”  
“Byron?!” Napoleon shouted from across the room. “Well, well! Who would have expected his daughter to be stuck here with the rest of us?”  
“If I may, your majesty, I would rather not discuss my father-”  
“Nobody asked, Napoleon.” Ros said. She shot a particularly nasty glare at Arthur.  
The two men decided to back off. Now they had nobody to pester but each other.  
“What’s Franz up to?” Napoleon asked.  
“FRANZ!” Arthur called.  
Franz came to his senses just in time to turn down the stove and reply.  
“Yes dear?” His voice suddenly grew sugary.  
“Where are you?”  
“I’m just making dinner!”  
“Alright alright, don’t vanish like that again.”  
“Yes dear!”  
The hooded figures listened to this exchange with more than a little bit of consternation.  
“Don’t you have anything better to do right now?” Jen asked incredulously. “I mean, we’re on a cruise ship.”  
“You can do some writing!” Jo added.  
“Write? With so many people stalking about this ship like ghosts?  
“You’re going to have a full night of free time...”  
Franz smiled. They sounded so much like Thompson, back in Pra-no, Palo Alto, Thompson who was so eager to read everything he wrote. Franz couldn’t have gathered the strength to finish The Trial without Thompson’s cheerleading, and then he couldn’t have meet Arthur...  
“I’m on vacation,” Franz murmured. “I can’t write! Don’t you two understand how pleasant it feels to have some happy distraction keeping you out of your misery? What’s the saying? Wallowing in the, my uh...”  
“Self-pity,” Jen replied.  
“Yes! Arthur pulled me out of that swamp and onto this ship.”  
“Soooo you’re looking forward to living with Arthur?” Jo asked. “Got that honeymoon mood?”  
Franz blushed and gently swatted their hand.  
“You’re too young to understand this! Even I don’t understand these feelings...”  
Franz kept stirring the soup. A very vivid image of himself, sitting on his balcony with his legs swinging off the edge and his face pressed against the bars, flashed through his mind.  
____

The two generals were pacing alone through the corridors, towards a set of formerly-automated glass doors. Napoleon pressed his face against them, trying to see inside.  
“Where do you even plan on staying?” he asked. “Are you taking him with you to England?”  
“I’m moving in with Franz,” Arthur replied. Napoleon turned around, wide-eyed.  
“Really? You’re just going to leave it all behind?”  
“Believe me, I would have loved to stay in England. But the people taking care of Franz wouldn’t have it. A professor called Thompson was the most vocal one. Either I moved or the marriage would never happen.”  
“Huh.” Napoleon tried to pry open the doors, to no avail. “I’d like to know more about this Thompson, see how he can manage to keep up with Franz.”  
“What do you mean?”  
“Oh, you just don’t meet a lot of people who know how to deal with Rifteds. Especially someone like your husband.”  
Arthur raised an eyebrow. “Let’s go back to the dining room, dinner should be ready by now.”  
Napoleon rushed past Arthur and vanished around a corner without replying. Arthur stood in the hall, dumbfounded and angry. Before he could say anything, however, Napoleon had come back with a folding chair.  
“We are not going back, Arturo. We need to have a talk, in private. Stand back.” Napoleon gently pulled Arthur to the side, “I’ve always wanted to try this!”  
He swung the chair in a wide arc and smashed one of the door panels, sending a spray of glass shards into the darkness ahead. Arthur covered his ears and muttered something poisonous. Napoleon did not notice. He was too busy knocking out the remaining pieces of glass with the chair.  
“Suit yourself,” Napoleon said, stepping through the empty frame with a flourish.  
“I don’t understand why you had to make such a racket, we could have talked in an empty suite or something-”  
Arthur gasped quietly at the size of the room. It was dark, but the light from the hall was enough to reveal its light-studded marble ceiling and the rings of balconies above. A shining brass elevator stood still in its glass column. Arthur could spot rows of overturned couches and empty service counters above him. The sensation of disarray and abandonment was giving him chills, but the gloom calmed him in a strange way. Napoleon was standing before the enormously tall curtained windows, watching colorful, muffled light fly by.  
“So, what have you been up to for the past year?” he asked.  
“Correspondence. Reporting. Riding.”  
Napoleon laughed. “Ah, a nobleman’s life, in a time without nobles. You know, I could have done that myself, but I couldn’t stay put when there was so much around me that I had to re-discover. Such a time to be alive! You should understand, you’ve read my book...”  
“No, I haven’t. I didn’t get around to finishing after I picked up The Trial.”  
Napoleon wondered how long it would take to melt Arthur’s facade. He could tell that Arthur did want to talk, even if he was doing a damn good job of covering it up. Napoleon never knew him in life, but there was definitely something amiss about this once-great duke. Arthur still seemed lost, carrying a sense of wounded dignity wherever his aimless wandering led him. Napoleon mentally congratulated himself for leaving him. Josephine was doing much better with the modern world, and she knew Napoleon’s limits and she knew her own.  
“I originally wasn’t going to do this, but considering that we’re both stuck on board with this project-”  
“What project?”  
“You forgot already? That phone call we had? Someone, or something, is after your husband, and possibly you. And we need to stop it.”  
“And?” Arthur said with unsettling calm.  
“I have resolved to help my wife and her friends investigate this. From what I understand, Franz is just a piece of some infernal plan by the PIRCH company.”  
“I know, Napoleon. And I don’t want to participate.”  
“Oh? You’re just going to let PIRCH move unimpeded?”  
“I’ll protect Franz when and if I have to.”  
Napoleon scoffed. “Says you and what army?”  
“No army! Jesus Christ, Napoleon, I thought you of all people would understand. I am done with fighting. A general like me has no place in this world. Ah, ah, let me finish. Is there war? Is there killing? Of course there is. But we can’t be everywhere at once and we don’t understand how any of this works now. War has changed, Napoleon, and we don’t even know if this I will not take action based on a few incomprehensible reports from noblewomen. Why do you trust Josephine’s judgement, anyways?”  
“She has personally witnessed the horrors listed in those reports, and she is my empress, not yours. Don’t pretend that you know a single thing about her. Why don’t you try to figure out your own spouse before attacking mine?”  
Arthur crossed his arms and paced in the darkness, his footsteps echoing against the ceiling. Two hundred years, a war and a wedding later, and he was still impossibly tangled with this emperor. And now he was asking Arthur to join him as an ally in arms.  
“Why didn’t you talk to me earlier?” Arthur asked. “You just spent all your time insulting me and playing with the gadgets on the ship.”  
“It didn’t occur to me until now that this could be the last time we see each other,” Napoleon said. “We have to settle the matter, Arthur. Join me, or go your way, and may our paths never meet again.”  
“I’m not joining you,” Arthur said. “I want to go home.”  
“Fine.”  
Arthur clenched his fists. His gut told him that this would not be the last time, no matter what he chose. Things would circle backwards on themselves in their usual perverse manner. He was filled with disgust at the thought.  
“I’ll tell Franz to say hello. Maybe.”  
“Franz?”  
“It looks like he wants to join the fight. You should have seen the look in his eyes when he was talking about the Rifteds being held captive at PIRCH. He’s smart but he’s a soft-hearted character.”  
Napoleon nodded. He could imagine himself as Franz’s commander, perhaps the figure that would force him to grow up and become a more durable man. Now that’s an interesting project, he thought. This inevitably raised the question of why Arthur got involved with Franz in the first place. Napoleon looked up at Arthur, standing stiffly in the dark with his face towards the illuminated hall, trembling with...anxiety? He had been awfully high-strung every time Napoleon saw him on the cruise. But what could push him over the edge into being nervous? Napoleon didn’t want to consider the possibility.  
“Josephine and I can make Franz into a fine soldier. He has the patience, if not the nerves for the job.”  
“You? Franz’s commander?”  
“If anyone’s going to lead the fight, it will be me.”  
Arthur turned around with anger in his eyes. “I’ll have a talk with Franz,” he said coldly, while walking towards the door. The glass on the floor formed a sparkling path outwards. Napoleon couldn’t let Arthur have the last word.  
“I missed you,” Napoleon blurted. “It was nice to see you again, even if it was like this, and just for a few days.”  
Arthur stopped in his tracks and laughed bitterly.  
Napoleon put a hand on Arthur’s shoulder. “It’s for the best. If we’re going to run into each other, we may as well enjoy it.”  
Arthur shrugged off Napoleon’s hand. “I wish I never met you that summer.”  
Which summer?  
“And there was nothing we could do about it. You know that, Arthur. Oh come one don’t play that game with me right now. Don’t be sad, Arthur. It’s an exciting time we live in. Take advantage of it.”  
Napoleon patted him on the back and stepped out the door.  
Arthur licked his lips and stood there in silence. When the footsteps faded, he walked out into the light.  
______

By the time both generals had taken their seats for dinner, Rosalind and Ada were already halfway through their meal.  
“These mashed potatoes taste great for something made with a sledgehammer,” Ada said. Jen put her sledgehammer down and curtsied.  
“Thanks for the hot soup, too.” Rosalind added. “I didn’t expect the ship to get so cold, even with the emergency generators online.”  
“Soup was Franz’s idea. Not ours.”  
Rosalind glanced at Franz, who grinned at her. She wondered if Ada could cook, but it was too hard to generate an image of Ada voluntarily making something more complex than canned chili. So she dropped the thought.  
Jo pushed a bowl of mashed potatoes towards Mudkip and took attendance.  
“Why don’t you take a seat, Herr Doctor? Not hungry?” Jo asked.  
“Huh?” Franz was rather surprised that anyone would notice a six-foot tall man noisily pacing around the table.  
“It’s your dinner. Take off the apron and chill, you’ve had a long day.”  
Franz smiled and said nothing. He rocked in place on his heels until Napoleon walked in.  
“Uh...if I may, do you know when the Duke will return for dinner?” Franz stammered.  
“Now,” Arthur said. He shuffled into the room and was greeted by an enthusiastic hug from his husband.  
Franz was all smiles as he set a bowl of soup, arranged the cutlery, hastily prepared Arthur’s seat. Arthur watched all of the activity without the slightest hint of movement.  
“Are you feeling alright, Your Grace?”  
“I’m fine,” Arthur said as he rubbed his eyes. He took his spoon but hesitated before putting it in his mouth. It was hard to eat while Franz loomed over him with an expectant look in his eyes.  
“What?”  
“I want to see if you like it. Go on...”  
By now everyone at the table was waiting with Franz for the verdict. Arthur shot them a glare and took a sip.  
“It’s nice,” he murmured. Franz let out a quiet but noticeable sigh of relief. He took his seat besides Arthur and started eating.  
Napoleon noticed that the hooded figures were almost done with their food and nudged Jen.  
“Go find Josephine. Preferably before this goes cold,” he said, putting a bowl of soup on the table. Jo took the bowl, Jen saluted, and Mudkip slithered off as they went in search of the empress.  
_____

The Bonapartes’ suite door was unlocked, so Jo could wander inside with little commotion.  
“I’m pretty sure she’s not in there,” Jen called.  
“But there might be clues in here!”  
“Clues? Like she’s MYSTERIOUSLY vanished? Josie’s probably just hanging ou-”  
“She did vanish, thought. Josephine’s been gone since we made the jump into hyperspace. But nobody said anything, because they assumed...”  
“...that she went to her room.” Jen understood now. A genuine mystery, hopefully one that could be resolved in a nonviolent manner. Jen decided to stay quiet about that particular concern.  
Jo hummed merrily as they went through the luggage. There were three cases scattered around the bed, two large black ones and one small brown duffel bag with a worn paper tag wrapped around the handle. Jo rubbed the tag between their fingers. It had been checked for an economy-class flight from Paris to San Francisco two years ago. This had to be Josephine’s bag. Jo unzipped it, and gasped.  
“What?” Jen asked, poking her head out from under the bed. Jo silently pulled a huge, beat up botany textbook from the bag. A quick flip through the pages revealed extensive highlighting and paragraphs and paragraphs of annotations in Josephine’s small, fine script. Jen and Jo marveled at the sheer density of the text.  
“She really ripped this book apart, didn’t she?”  
“Look!” Jo whispered. “This is just the beginning!” They pulled out even more books; a dictionary, novels, an impressive variety of history books ranging from the Industrial Revolution to the War on Terror, a copy of Kafka’s diaries (with a frightening amount of sticky notes between the pages), and a slim, yellowed volume on potion making.  
“Hey, what is she gonna do with this thing?” Jo asked, feeling a sharp corner in the now-limp bag. They reached in and pulled out a loaded handgun, along with a few boxes of ammo. The hooded figures gave each other a look and put the gun back in the bag. Gently.  
“Got second thoughts about this?” Jen said.  
“Well, this certainly changed my plans for finding her! What on earth was she preparing for? Tell me, seriously, where you think this kind of woman would be on a cruise ship.”  
“Where did you think she would be?”  
“I don’t know, the spa place? But that’s obviously not her first priority.”  
The hooded figures sat around and frowned for a while until Jo came upon an idea. They dashed into the bathroom and came back with a bottle of amber perfume. Jo whistled for Mudkip. “Here you go,” they said as they sprayed perfume on the slime. “Follow this scent!”  
Mudkip flashed yellow a few times before darting off.  
____

Josephine was standing before the window in the game room. The blinds were propped open with pool cues so she could sketch the view, or what remained of it. All semblance of location had melted away into a psychedelic stream of colors. One of Ching’s ships was visible in the distance, with waves of tiny, ever shifting specks lapping against the hull. This was the only indication the fleet was indeed warping across the Pacific and not some featureless dimension. The window cast a bright, overwhelming light on Josephine’s face. It was more than enough to write by. She took a deep breath and set the tip of her pen on her notebook. Think! Josephine commanded herself. There has to be some observation, some phenomena, some key factor in all of this. Something helpful. She squinted straight at the window for as long as her eyes could stand it, trying to burn the colors into her mind. This is simple. Just record what you see. Just like what Ros told you.  
Josephine gripped her pen tightly and began drawing.

The pitter patter of feet in the hall.

Josephine quickly shut her notebook but did not have time to hide it before the kids came in.  
“Whoaa...” Jo ran up to the window and pressed their face to the window. For a few minutes, the kids were too stunned by the view outside to speak.  
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Josephine said. The kids turned around and nodded.  
“Were you drawing, your majesty?” Jo asked.  
“What? I’m just, I wasn’t...”  
“I didn’t know you could draw! Wow, I’m learning a lot about you today.”  
Josephine hesitantly held out her little notebook. “Make it quick.”  
Like the textbook, every blank spot on the page was filled with dense writing. Here and there Josephine had drawn sigils or uncertain pictures of machinery, ranging from the sync chambers and what looked like a dismembered elevator.  
“You work very hard,” Jen said.  
“Really.” Josephine took the notebook and tucked it under her arm.  
“Have you shown this to Ros and Ada? I think they’d want it for their research, especially those pages about drawing sigils on metal.”  
“I...no, I haven’t. I can’t understand a thing they talk about and I would not like to trouble them with my work.”  
“I don’t understand them either.”  
“Well of course you don’t, you’re just a child. But me?” Josephine put a hand on her chest. “I’m an old lady with a lot of catching up to do. It’s not just the science that I can’t understand, I barely know how my own home works in this age.” There was no hint of humor in her voice.  
The hooded figures nodded uncomfortably.  
“Well...dinner’s ready and your soup is on the table.”  
“Thank you, children. I will be downstairs in a moment.”  
Jen opened her mouth but Jo silenced her with a nudge.  
“What?!” Jen hissed.  
“Just leave her alone now! You heard the empress, she’ll be coming downstairs...”  
The hooded figures left, bickering under their breath. Josephine shook her head with a smile. They may have been mean and outright frightening at times, but they were not above having tempers or otherwise acting like children. She missed her own children.  
_____

“Oh, thank goodness. We were worried about you, mon cherie!”  
Josephine smiled and took her seat beside Napoleon, who put a warm arm around her shoulder.  
“Look at this,” Josephine said with more than a little impatience while handing her notebook to Rosalind. She flipped through the pages and put it away.  
“I can’t wait to get a good look at this! Ada and I have our work cut out for us.”  
“Yes, I mean, it’s been very nice to see everyone again, but I’m chomping at the bit to start organizing this paper.”  
The other ladies nodded.  
“I have more than enough to work with,” Ada said. “Ros and I are on the verge of a breakthrough.”  
Rosalind tugged on Ada’s sleeve and whispered something in her hear. Ada’s face grew pale but she turned to the table with a smile.  
“We don’t have enough information to say anything else. Can’t go jumping to conclusions.”  
“I’d like to keep in touch, though. I want to know what you can find about the rifts,” Napoleon said. “Say, Franz, what are you going to do when you get home?”  
“Me?”  
“...Yes?”  
“I will help in any way possible,” Franz said.  
Arthur frowned. “Do you really think that’s the smartest decision?”  
“I can do legal work. I can pull strings at Stanford, if anyone n-needs more information on Rifteds...”  
“I thought you were done with the office.”  
“This is more than frittering my life away for the clothes on my back! This is a fight! My liberty is at stake, possibly all of our liberty, and I could not forgive myself if I abandoned such a cause.”  
“Abandon? You are free to do as you please in this world, what use would chaining yourself do?”  
Franz’s eyes grew intense.  
“I’ll say it again. It is my duty! This is an unparalleled opportunity-”  
“Opportunity to do what?”  
“To finally understand the world we live in! To learn! Arthur, have you ever wondered what magic was like, in far off coasts? What forces we can harness to find our way home in these times? Have you ever wanted to be one with magic?”  
“Yes. When I was a little boy.”  
Arthur turned to hold Franz’s hands in his own.  
“Listen to me. You do not understand what you’re getting yourself into. I trust Napoleon and his wife. I don’t understand the ladies. Ching is already commanding a navy and that is enough reason to trust her. But you, you’ve never been on a campaign or even traveled far or been in a real fight...” It occurred to Arthur that he couldn’t imagine Franz as a soldier while he was still sitting there, holding his thin, smooth hands. He had no idea what they could do.  
“Well...no matter what happens, you’ll be there to teach me, right?” Franz looked up at Arthur with a warm smile.  
“I suppose I will.” Arthur slowly stood up with his half-empty plates and walked off, loudly dumping them in the kitchen. He bristled under the dull anxiety in the hooded figure’s eyes when he returned to the table. “I think I’ll retire for the night. Franz, I already bought our tickets to California, so don’t worry about them. Good night.”  
“Good night, dear.”  
“Good night, Your Grace!” Napoleon shouted. He turned back to a stunned Franz.  
“What?”  
“I’m just...sorry, Your Majesty, I didn’t hear that coming! Ha ha!”  
Napoleon shrugged and let Franz sulk over his dinner. He couldn’t figure out what was making him act like this.  
“Should I say something?” Napoleon whispered to Josephine.  
“Oh, don’t bother, he’s supposed to be like this. A melancholy character.”  
“Well, I’m going to cheer him up.” Napoleon cleared his throat. “Dr. Kafka!”  
Franz flinched. “Yes, Your Majesty?”  
Napoleon laughed for the first time all day.  
“Easy, easy. I just want to hear some insight of yours.”  
“Insight?”  
“You know, on fighting PIRCH? What’s your plan?”  
“Uh...” Franz blushed and tried to find words. “I didn’t have anything specific in mind. I just wanted to be available as a pair of hands, to help out whenever we needed help and-”  
“That’s very kind of you, but we’ll need to give everyone a set role,” Rosalind said. “You’re a lawyer, aren’t you? You could help us on that front.”  
“Me stealing this cruise ship is illegal, but I did it,” Ching said. “A lawyer’s not going to be useful.”  
“I was thinking about filing a civil liberties suit back in London. Now, the point isn’t winning the suit, it’s bringing public attention to PIRCH and the various crimes committed under their name as well as things that happened when we were still in their hands.”  
Franz was briefly stunned out of his mental compilation of differences between insurance and litigation. “You were kidnapped by PIRCH? Then, then who summoned you? If anyone summoned you, that is.”

Rosalind gave him a tired look. At the time she was not familiar with Rifted etiquette, but she knew enough to comprehend how rude that was.  
“Ada and I have been very fortunate to be living under the care of Oxford University and its affiliates, even if it means that we’ve been on the run from PIRCH for...” for some reason Rosalind couldn’t remember how long she had been around. It was all blending together into a cloud of nonsense punctuated with hikes and snow and the clamor of cars. Her first memory in this world, a dark ceiling above her and a motionless Ada to her left.  
“They’ve been watching us for 2 years,” Ada said. “It’s too dangerous if the entire operation is limited to two agents who are already under heavy surveillance.”  
“Agents, I like the sound of that,” Napoleon said.  
“Well, it is top secret work!” Ada made finger guns and winked. This worried Franz.  
“You...you don’t mean we’ll be in mortal danger?”  
“Not if everything goes as planned,” Ching said. “I mean, me personally, I’m ready to fight any time, but if you all do a good job I won’t have to.”  
“Right...” Rosalind replied. “I’ll present my results and then we’ll begin the process of stopping PIRCH in their tracks. The kids will be of great help.”  
Ching elbowed Jen. “How strong are you with magic?”  
“Uh...I don’t know.”  
“You and your friend raised TWO people from the dead and you don’t know how strong you are?” Napoleon asked.  
Jo cleared their throat and tried to keep calm in front of the Rifteds’ half-scared half-shocked expressions.  
“You see, um, we aren’t officially a part of any coven. So we’ve never taken a test to gauge our magical ability.”  
“You’ve never even applied.” Rosalind said.  
“Yes I did! I bugged Jen into applying with me, but we probably didn’t get accepted...we never heard back from the coven...”  
“Only because you refused to talk about Franz and Arthur as like, experience we’ve had. That was a good resume thing to have.” Jen said.  
“That was illegal!”  
“So?” Ching scoffed. “Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. You shouldn’t need someone else to tell you how strong you are. Magic is a beast of its own.”  
“Yes, but I’d like to at least know what we’re getting by having you on board,” Rosalind said curtly. “We don’t know why yet but Rifteds can’t use magic while PIRCH can. Modern magicians are a must.” 

For a few minutes nobody said a word. Franz ate quickly as if he were running late for work and darted off with his plate.  
“What’s the rush?!” Napoleon shouted.  
“Honey, just remember what I told you earlier,” Josephine said. “He’s simply a strange man. Don’t worry, you’ll get to know him soon enough.”  
“Why him, though? That makes no sense.”  
“Why...what?”  
“Why does PIRCH care about him so much? This is a serious problem, everyone! What does PIRCH want and why is Franz of all people the key?”  
“I...we’re not entirely sure, Your Majesty.” Ada said. “We are still in the process of collecting intelligence...”  
“Utterly ridiculous. I won’t fight someone if I don’t know what they’re trying to achieve. We have to understand the idea that governs the enemy’s movements if we want any hope of predicting them.”  
Josephine looked tensely at the other women. She was probably the most well-informed agent, second to Ada, but she would not speak for fear of coming off as defensive. All four of them could feel their alliance wobble.  
“Well?” Napoleon said. “You’ve all been at this for 2 years straight, do you have a clue?”  
“Your Majesty, if I may, this is...a sensitive topic.”  
“Ada!” Rosalind whispered, to no avail.  
“Sensitive? Well, then we could talk about it after dinner.”  
“Is it something I need to know?” Jo asked.  
“No.” Josephine said firmly. Of course, this did nothing but pique the kids’ curiosity. They shuffled off while everyone sat in fearful silence.  
_____

Ada and Napoleon met in a storage room on the other side of the ship. This gave the hooded figures plenty of time to find hiding spots. They crouched in cardboard boxes, completely hidden except for their eyes peeking from the handles. 

“Ew, this one is wet!” Jen cried.  
“Oh yeah? My box has a bunch of heavy cans on top! I think. Hey, can you see what it is from your side?”  
“Shh, here they come.”

The rustle of Ada’s dress and footsteps.  
“OK, just tell me everything,” Napoleon said. “What do you know-”  
“One moment.” Ada jumped and batted a security camera down with a loud crash. “Alright. This particular story is long and I don’t remember most of it, but don’t you dare ask Ros for more details.”  
“Ros and I were summoned by PIRCH, two years ago. It was...early winter. I don’t know the precise date. We woke up on the floor and some magicians took us to another room, an office.”  
“You didn’t resist the call?”

Ada grimaced. “It’s....it doesn’t work like that all the time. Anyways, both of us were sitting in a very modern-looking office. I was scared out of my mind, but Ros seemed very calm. From her clothing, I deduced that she was more contemporary than I was, so I put my faith in her. Oh god, how terrified I was. I was convinced that I was in hell.”

“A tall Asian man (two boxes rustled) walked in, sat down, and very gently told us we had nothing to fear, and that we were here for very important research that could bring joy to the world. I was utterly shocked to think that I was here because of my scientific work, of all things. And this man, the Manager, was right. 

For the first few weeks PIRCH treated me well: I had a small room and meals in the cafeteria along with the other scientists working there. They gave me a keycard, like all the other employees had. I liked my coworkers. They taught me the basics of modern technology, especially those machines they called computers. They said I was the mother of computers and I’m inclined to say they were right. I mastered them quickly. The only mistake PIRCH made was angering Ros. One night, we could hear shouting and crying in the distance, something completely new. Ros, being a curious soul, got up and went to see what the matter was. 

It was the Refugee, in a torture room. Scientists weren’t supposed to be in that wing to begin with, and the guards retaliated swiftly. For a few days after that she limped around the labs, muttering venomous things to herself. Everyone kept their distance from her and reprimanded me like a child if I tried to ask questions. I was afraid again, confused and burning with anger at the beating Ros got, but it was all nipped in the bud. One night Ros appeared in my room and simply told me to follow her. So I walked. Nothing but my gut leading me to freedom on the streets of San Francisco.”

“There wasn’t a fight?”  
“No, not at all. We just took off our shoes and quietly stepped out.”  
“They gave you the keys out of the building?” Napoleon chuckled.  
“PIRCH greatly underestimated our appetite for the unknown,” Ada said with a smile. “You know how it is for us Rifteds...we’re like children again, aren’t we? We have to learn how to walk again, to swim and fly the way we could in the past. So I had to take this kind of risk. It was much easier with Ros by my side, feeling the same growing pains I did in the modern world. I...I’m a lucky one. Someone recognized me and Oxford took Ros and I under its wing.”

There was a bittersweet look on Ada’s face, as if she were reliving that fateful night and all of its terrible triumph. She took a deep breath and smiled softly.

“That’s my story.”  
“So...what does this have to do with our mission? Why go back to PIRCH?”  
Ada grew pale but did not lose her composure. “I never learned why I was summoned or what my work was for. I imagine Ros never found out, either. That, combined with the horrid, horrid screaming...”  
Napoleon nodded gravely and put a hand on Ada’s shoulder. “What a quest you’ve taken on!”  
“Mhmm.”  
“And you’re not the only Rifteds they’re after. They want Franz, they have a Refugee already, who knows what they’d do with you-”  
“They don’t want me or Ros, they want our work! They’ve been on our trails at Oxford this whole time, like vultures! If I couldn’t do math I would be a dead woman!”  
“Don’t overreact.”  
“I’m...” Ada turned bright red. “Sorry. Terribly sorry, Your Majesty, it’s...been a while since I could tell someone about these things.”  
“It’s alright. We all have these stories.” Napoleon paced around the small closet as much as he could. This was a personal fight, fueled by morbid curiosity that he didn’t quite grasp. But they didn’t have much of a choice. Josephine was already on PIRCH’s radar and anything involving this many Rifteds at once was bad. Napoleon counted the Rifteds he knew before this summer. Two people, quite unusual by all accounts. He said goodnight and left with a sense of inevitability creeping over his head.

Exhausted, Ada sat down on a box and screamed along with Jen. Jen leapt out of the crumpled mess and got into a fighting stance.

‘What the hell!”  
“Jen! You, you-” Ada looked around wildly. “Where’s the other one?”  
Jo meekly knocked over the cans on top their box and sat up. Ada stared at the two children with tears welling in her eyes.  
“We won’t tell anyone,” Jen said softly.  
“That’s it! I don’t know what to do!” Ada cried as she ran out the door. “I’m going mad! Mad!”  
______

The ship started rocking more vigorously as the night wore on. Rosalind carefully gathered all of her papers and was on her way to her room when she ran into a distraught Ada.  
“Ada dear, what’s the matter?” Rosalind dropped her pile and wiped Ada’s tears. Ada looked her in the eyes and silently opened her mouth.  
“Ada? What did Napoleon say?”  
“I told him about our summoning...”  
Rosalind staggered.  
“You spilled that to him this early? We don’t even know if he’s going to help us!” Rosalind rubbed her temples and paced around in a small circle. “Ada, I’ve TOLD you to be careful about this...”  
“I’m...I’m sorry...”  
“No worries. I’ll have to keep a close eye on him and all his movements. You can track his electronics, can’t you?”  
“Yes I can.”  
“Good. “ Rosalind walked off with what she hoped was a calm expression. Ada stood alone in the hall for a while before leaving.

“She doesn’t have to do this every time something goes wrong, it’ll just build up, and up and up...” she murmured to herself, skirts swishing along the stairs. “But what do I know?This is really Ros’s project and I’m just doing this for her.”

Ada pushed her door open and flopped down on the bed. The storm began to shake the ship more violently and her belongings rattled in every dark corner of the room. Ada grabbed the thin, starchy blankets in her fists. She mustered up the resolve to start working. It was better than no apology.  
_____

Rosalind went to bed angry and unwilling to sleep despite being thoroughly worn out. Her only comfort was that this trip was almost over, and she would never have to talk to those people again, or at the very least not in the next month, if everything went well. Josephine could afford to be patient with them, but Rosalind and Ching had to be there to lay down the law when they needed it. Rosalind turned towards the closed curtains and watched the lights flicker by. She couldn’t sleep. It was impossible to sleep anyways, with the warp stream flashing bright as day behind two pieces of flimsy cloth. On second thought, there was something else keeping Rosalind awake...she sat up and listened carefully. Irregular but distinct thumps filtered through the walls. Rosalind got up without bothering to put her shoes on and set out to investigate. 

Walking past the empty rooms felt fundamentally wrong for Rosalind. It was not like being the last person at the lab, or taking the bus at 4 AM. The unlocked doors rattled with every movement of the ship and darkened rooms flickered with light as if there was silent lightning outside. Rosalind staggered around the swaying halls. The ship must be barging through a storm, she thought. Suddenly, the floor lurched to the right and sent her into the wall. Somewhere in the distance, Rosalind could distinctly hear a crash and someone crying out in alarm.

“Ada?” she called. “ADA!”

When Rosalind finally fell/ran/made her way to Ada’s room, she knocked the door. 

“What's happening?”  
“Don't open the door! I'm gonna-” something large made a thumping noise. “Never mind what I said, mind the monitor, come inside!”  
Rosalind opened the door and hopped over a large LCD monitor as it slid out to the other side of the hall. Ada was sitting on the floor, tangled in cables and hugging her laptop while keeping an alarming variety of electronics secure with her legs. Her hair was long and disheveled and she clearly had not slept at all. Rosalind took some of the heavier machines from Ada’s legs and gingerly tucked them into the corner with some blankets for padding.  
“Are you alright?”  
Ada started crying. Rosalind crouched besides her and put a hand on her shoulder.  
“I-I was just trying to see if I could get the Internet set up in here and get a head start on Napoleon’s surveillance and then we hit something and then everything started sliding around, all out of control, look at this-” Ada raised a foot and her keyboard skittered into the corner. “So now all I can do is keep my gear from breaking! It’s just, so very, how do you say it, I don’t know, it’s been exactly the same as everything else this week!”  
“Here, here, I can hold onto the rest. What do you mean by everything else this week?”  
“I don’t know what to do! I keep thinking about all the conversations I’ve had with the other Rifteds and it’s lining up in the most terrible ways. We really have no idea what we’re doing.”  
“Well...” Rosalind sat deep in thought. “What do you think we’re doing?”

The ship rocked gently. Muted light traced Ada’s profile against the blue darkness.  
“I know why I’m doing this. Every time I ask myself where I am, in this shining moment, I have to ask myself why I’m here. And I feel horrible, because it’s just not...”  
“Not?” Rosalind’s eyes were wide with fright.  
“Never tell anyone what I’m telling you now.” Ada grabbed both of Rosalind’s hands. “At the end of it all, I am doing this for you.”  
“Wh-what do you mean?”  
“Please don’t think harshly of me for this.”  
Rosalind leaned in with a puzzled expression. Ada leaned in and softly pressed her lips to hers. They held the kiss for a moment before Ada backed away. Rosalind’s confusion was now spiraling into a mix of joy and terror. She tried to shuffle away and tripped over her own feet.  
“I’m sorry!”  
“No, no, Ada, don’t be sorry! I might as well say it now! I like you too!” Rosalind cradled Ada’s face in her hands. “If I knew sooner-”  
“I don’t know why I’m like this tonight. Pouring myself out left and right.”  
“You’re lonely, Ada. You need a heart to heart with someone. I can listen, even if I don’t have much to say afterwards...”

Ada smiled with tears in her eyes and hugged Rosalind. 

“Thank you. I’ve always counted on you, through all of our trials.”  
“Me? I thought you were the strong one! You dived into so many things at once I could barely keep up with you!”  
“But you pay most of the rent.”  
“And you fixed the heater last winter.”  
“And you take care of me when I get sick.”  
“And you buy me the cutest dresses.”

Both of them came to the same giddy conclusion and were relieved to have something pleasant to look forward to. 

“Well...we have a big day tomorrow. You should go to bed, Ros.”  
“No, no, I can sleep here.”  
Ada’s widened. “Here.”  
“I don’t think I can fall asleep without you now.”  
The two women laid peacefully on their bed, listening to the relentless patter of rain on the window.  
"I promise we'll do our very best against PIRCH. We can't lose."  
"And how are you so sure, Ros?"  
"We've done amazing things before. That's why we're here."  
Ada smiled and pressed her face against Rosalind's exposed neck.  
"It's happening." Ada murmured. "We're really doing this."  
"Yeah."  
"You know...not a day goes by where I don't spend a few minutes in complete shock, just frozen in awe at my existence here."  
"Yeah?"  
"I'm having one of those moments right now. In two short years I've gone from a prisoner to a computer scientist, on a heroic quest, lying here with you in my bed. And it all feels right."  
Rosalind was glad she was lying down because otherwise she would have fainted. Instead, for the first time in what seemed like eternity, Rosalind could clear her mind completely. The whole world became a dimly flickering window, the heat clinging to her skin, Ada's soft form pressed against hers.  
"It does feel right," Rosalind said. She let Ada put an arm around her waist and fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ha gay


End file.
